On 18 November 2024 the Committee received two requests for advice from the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, following two requests for reconsideration of previous decisions by the then State Secretary and Minister of Education, Culture and Science regarding files RC 1.35 and (RC 4.123 concerning RC 1.6).
The request for reconsideration of the decision regarding RC 4.123 (with regard to RC 1.6) concerns 33 paintings, 37 works on paper from the NK Collection, and one painting from the Dutch National Art Collection. The request for reconsideration of the advice regarding RC 1.35 concerns 139 drawings and three etchings from the NK Collection that were recovered from Kyiv (Ukraine) on 9 July 2004. The applicant contends that there are new facts regarding both requests that shed a different light on the aforementioned cases and, for that reason, requests reconsideration of the previous decisions.
The Restitutions Committee’s assessment framework, section 1, preamble and under d, in conjunction with section 1 under 2, stipulates that if a restitution application concerns a case about which the Restitutions Committee has already issued advice or a binding opinion, it will not be handled substantively ‘unless there are new facts or circumstances that justify doing so’. The Committee comments in this context that requests for reconsideration should not concern facts that were already known and are submitted once again to support different argumentation but should concern new facts that are relevant to the nature of the advice.
The Committee decided to assess the requests for reconsideration jointly and found that in these cases there are no new facts within the meaning of section 1, preamble and under 2 of the assessment framework. In view of this, the Committee concluded on 3 June 2025 that requests RC 4.218 and RC 4.219 for reconsideration of the decisions regarding RC 4.123 and RC 1.35 would not be handled substantively.
In response to this conclusion, the Minister decided on 7 July 2025, not to reconsider the earlier requests and to reject both requests.
