2023-11-08 17:15:54
In Paris, August 12, 2023. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP
Paris City Hall plans to carry out, on Friday, November 10, “a feasibility test for dismantling, emptying, reassembling and replacing identically a set of four second-hand booksellers’ boxes and their contents”. This operation is part of the strategy of the Paris Police Prefecture intended to secure the banks of the Seine during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, on July 26, 2024.
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From 8:15 p.m. – if the weather is good – this test, worthy of the complex refitting of an old Ikea wardrobe, will be carried out between the Tournelle and Sully bridges. According to the Cultural Association of Booksellers of Paris, this operation should allow the Town Hall to decide on “the removal or not of second-hand booksellers’ boxes located on the river route” in July.
In a working document dated October 23, the City of Paris envisaged a withdrawal, between July 13 and 18, of the 500 to 700 boxes, depending on the security perimeter chosen, as well as a replacement, from August 3. The choice of service provider will be made according to their ability to “working on fragile objects (books, but also small flea markets, posters, engravings, etc.) and on boxes that are sometimes very damaged”, whose weight, with contents, is estimated at 250 kilograms each. The City has already identified “around a hundred boxes in poor condition” Who “will need to be repaired”.
Custom bases for each box
It is an understatement to say that the second-hand booksellers are vehemently opposed to such a withdrawal, brandishing a petition of support, “Safeguarding second-hand booksellers on the quays of the Seine”, which gathered, on Wednesday November 8, more than 173,000 signatures. The 200 booksellers are awaiting the result of the test but are ready to launch summary proceedings before the Paris administrative court, from December.
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For Friday, the City had a custom base built for each of the four boxes. Nothing says that such a plan will be adopted for all. “The idea for this test did not come from usspecifies Jérôme Callais, president of the Cultural Association of Booksellers of Paris. Our only hope is to demonstrate the non-feasibility of the operation. » He fears that certain wagon green boxes, which are part of Parisian heritage in the same way as the Guimard metro entrances or the Wallace fountains, will not survive this treatment. And that the City does not replace them with something laid.
According to him, “if the Police Prefecture is in its role, the Paris City Hall takes out a bazooka to kill a mosquito. When Charles III or the Pope passes along the quays or when the Tour de France arrives, nothing is asked of us. For the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, all you have to do is close the boxes on D-day and put a security barrier in front of it”.
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