Rethink Heritage

France is divided into three territorial levels: municipalities, departments and regions. As a result, the State has “central” services and “dispersed” services, found in regions and departments.

The State is responsible for national heritage policies, with two ministries, the Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Ministry of Ecological Transition, guaranteeing the joint management of the cultural and natural heritage of the territory. They maintain constant communication with civil society, especially associations, in order to guarantee good governance on all matters connected with heritage.

The Ministry of Culture is specifically in charge of executing policies for the protection, conservation and restoration of heritage. Within the Ministry of Culture, the General Directorate for Heritage plays a unifying role and implements this policy for the management of different types of heritage. It is responsible for the design, organization, guidance, optimization and evaluation of state policies on heritage. The work of the Ministry of Culture is mostly organized through the Regional Directorates of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) and Territorial Services of Architecture and Heritage (STAP).

The Regional Directorates of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) are services distributed throughout the country to form a network in charge of the implementation at regional level of the policies established centrally by the Ministry. These Regional Directorates work in close collaboration with local authorities, and both local and regional bodies have gradually taken on further competences in the management of heritage policies. Initially In 1983, and then in 2004, new competences were transferred to local and regional authorities, specifically the general inventory of cultural heritage and the possibility of transferring the ownership of protected buildings making them into historic monuments.

This structure of decentralized competences has been gradually transferred from the central structure to the different regions, departments and municipalities.

 LEGAL FRAMEWORK

31 December 1913 on the protection of historic monuments
”Code du patrimoine” (2004) 
LOI n° 2016-925 - 7 July 2016 on the freedom of creation, architecture and heritage

 RATIFIED INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS

• Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954): ratified by France on 17 June 1957
• Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970) – ratified by France on 7 January 1997
• Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972): ratified by France on 27 June 1975
• Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe (Granada, 1985): ratified on 13 March 1987
• European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage (Revised) (Valletta, 1992); ratified on 10 July 1995
• European Landscape Convention (Florence, 2000): ratified on 17 March 2006
• Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001): ratified on 7 February 2013
• Unesco Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003): ratified by France on 11 July 2006

Information regarding legislation is based on Council of Europe's data:  https://www.coe.int/en/web/herein-system/france