The Greek prime minister has called on Andy Burnham to find the “political will” to send the Parthenon sculptures back to Greece.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote in the Guardian that returning the classical treasures, also known as the Elgin Marbles in the UK, would “send a powerful signal” but would require “courage”.
The sculptures have been on display in the British Museum since the 19th Century, though Greece has long disputed the legality of their removal.
Mitsotakis and his government have previously held talks with the British Museum about the sculptures, but the two have so far failed to reach an agreement, with Greek authorities seeking their permanent return.
The Greek PM used the recent fanfare generated by the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum to restate his country’s claim to the Elgin Marbles.
“Nobody would seriously contemplate cutting what survives of the tapestry in two and displaying half in London and half in Bayeux, and claiming this was an adequate way to understand it,” he wrote on Thursday.
“Yet that is exactly what happened to the Parthenon sculptures.”
His comments come after British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan suggested that the recent arrangement struck between the UK and France, after decades of rejected requests to borrow the medieval embroidery, offered hope of a deal with Greece over the Elgin Marbles.
Mitsotakis said he was “surprised at the recent suggestion from the museum that the Bayeux Tapestry loan might provide a template for an agreement over the Parthenon sculptures”, adding: “I do not believe it does.”
“Greece cannot accept any arrangement that would require it to recognise the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures, or a scheme that would mean we ‘borrow’ parts of our own monument,” he wrote.
Instead, he urged Burnham to stand by his previous comments on the sculptures and find a way of returning them for good.
This would be a “decisive step”, Mitsotakis said, that would “reunite the sculptures and transform a historic dispute into a unique act of cultural friendship”.
Back in 2023, several years before he returned to government and became prime minister, Burnham said the sculptures should be returned to Greece with “no strings attached”.
For years, he supported a change in the law to allow for this. But last month, he told the Financial Times that “ultimately it’s an issue for the British Museum”, adding that “legally that’s where that issue rests”.