Greece intends to continue with its policy of publicizing the return of antiquities because it encourages people to give more artifacts back, Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis told Parliament yesterday.

PASOK MP Miltiades Papaioannou questioned the policy, claiming that Greece had always followed a low-key approach to the return of antiquities. “Until now, Greece had never been involved in the process of using evidence to get artifacts back,” said Voulgarakis. “The antiquities that were previously returned were donations.”

In the last year, Greece has put on display items returned by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the University of Heidelberg in Germany, among others. “The publicity that has followed each return has helped a lot and there is a lot of information coming in to the ministry about [Greek] antiquities abroad,” said Voulgarakis.