It is to be hoped that this meeting was not an open book. Parisian second-hand booksellers, Paris City Hall and the State met this Thursday late afternoon at the police headquarters to discuss the fate of second-hand booksellers and their hundreds of green boxes. These must be moved before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, scheduled for July 26, 2024. This meeting took place “in a tense climate” for some, with “somewhat heated discussions” for others, without a decision being made.
At the heart of the exchange, the dismantling, storage and reinstallation of nearly 600 of the 900 “green wagon” boxes announced by the police headquarters in a letter addressed to second-hand booksellers on July 25. These boxes, attached to the parapet overlooking the quays of the Seine in the center of the capital and containing second-hand books, souvenirs and other curiosities, are judged to represent a security issue in the context of the opening ceremony of the Games, which must take place on the Seine next summer.
“The city is very attached to second-hand booksellers and their heritage history”
While waiting to issue an order, “the police chief agreed that tests be carried out on three, four boxes” of different invoices to assess the feasibility of the move. He also committed to “reviewing the linearity” of the boxes to be moved to possibly reduce the list, explained the stakeholders. Above all, it made it possible to “renew a necessary dialogue, which was the objective of the meeting”, affirmed at the exit the deputy of the town hall in charge of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Pierre Rabadan.
“The city is very attached to second-hand booksellers and their heritage history” but also takes into account “the security constraints which require decision-making by the police prefect,” underlined Laurent Nuñez. For second-hand booksellers, for whom there are “as many scenarios as there are boxes”, these tests will be an opportunity “to demonstrate the validity of [leurs] arguments”: the diversity and complexity of the structures of the boxes, in place for sometimes a century, make the operation impossible, according to Pascal Corseaux, vice-president of the cultural association of Paris second-hand booksellers. However, he “took note of the goodwill of the town hall”.
A petition gathered nearly 144,000 signatures this Thursday
This summer, the City of Paris indicated that it would cover repairs to damaged boxes, an amount likely to reach 1.5 million euros according to Jérôme Callais, representative of the association. The mayor of the 5th arrondissement Laurence Berthout (Horizons) said she was “annoyed” by the slowness of the town hall and asked that “expert service providers” carry out the tests alongside town hall agents.
Within the municipal majority, the president of the environmental group Fatoumata Koné believes that the fate of the second-hand booksellers is an example of the “deprivation of the freedoms of Parisians” that she “fears” during the Olympics. The elected official deplores that until now “the town hall does not [ait] not sufficiently supported.” A petition, launched on the site change.org, gathered nearly 144,000 signatures on Thursday. Present in the Parisian setting for four hundred and fifty years, second-hand booksellers covet the UNESCO World Heritage listing, already granted to the banks of the Seine in 1991.