Emmanuel Macron has decided to abandon the planned movement of the second-hand booksellers’ boxes installed on the banks of the Seine in preparation for the opening ceremony of next summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, the Elysée announced on Tuesday February 13.
“Noting that no consensual and reassuring solution could be identified with these actors”, “the President of the Republic asked the Minister of the Interior and the Paris Police Prefect that all second-hand booksellers be preserved, and that none of them is forced to be displaced,” the same source explained.
For months, the Paris police chief, Laurent Nuñez, has been citing compelling security reasons to temporarily remove these wagon green boxes from the banks of the Seine, provoking the anger of second-hand booksellers.
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is scheduled to take place on July 26 on the Seine. The police headquarters had planned to remove some of the second-hand booksellers’ boxes for “a few days”, which also posed a problem for the view of the river spectacle from the high quays. A compromise solution had been considered to dismantle only part of the 932 boxes stowed on the banks of the Seine, but without satisfying the second-hand booksellers.
“The soul of Paris”
Emmanuel Macron asked “that the security system be adapted accordingly, with the spaces concerned on the high quays no longer likely to accommodate the public during the ceremony”, according to the Elysée.
This looming decision had already been taken into account in the gauge revised downwards at the end of January to around 300,000 spectators, assured a source close to the matter. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin “will return to the entire security system for the opening ceremony at the end of March, once all consultations with local elected officials and stakeholders have been completed”, specified this source.
“I thank the President of the Republic for having heard the arguments of the
“We are all very happy and we thank the president, who understood that we were the soul of Paris,” rejoiced the president of the Cultural Association of Booksellers of Paris, Jérôme Callais, contacted by Agence France -Press (AFP). “Our resistance has borne fruit,” exulted Albert Abid, a bookseller for ten years on the Quai de la Tournelle, to Agence France-Presse (AFP). For him, “moving these boxes was touching a living memory of Paris.”
