The mayor of Paris will finally exempt the reconstruction site of Notre-Dame, financed by donations, from royalties, first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire told AFP on Tuesday. At a rate of 3.4 million euros per year and depending on the final duration of the project, this fee linked to the occupation of the land was to represent a total of around twenty million euros. The total of donations received and contractual pledges as part of the national subscription reached 831 million euros in September 2021.
The reopening to the public of the burnt cathedral is planned for 2024, but the construction site, led by the Public Establishment (EPRND) could continue for longer, underlined Emmanuel Grégoire. “The exemption was a privileged hypothesis on our part” but “we wanted to keep control of the when and the how”, declared to AFP Emmanuel Grégoire who said he was “extremely annoyed by the instrumentalized controversy around the subject. “There was never any question of a euro from Notre-Dame being used for anything other than Notre-Dame,” he said. The executive led by PS mayor Anne Hidalgo will propose this Thursday to the Council of Paris “exemption from fees due for the occupation of the public domain”, in a text sent to AFP.
“Perseverance Pays”
In mid-February, the deputies of the fact-finding mission on the restoration of the Gothic cathedral burnt down in April 2019 had castigated the attitude of the Town Hall, considering that it was “not possible to take charge of by the public generosity of royalties which represent several million euros, for the benefit of the town hall of Paris”. The president (LR) of the fact-finding mission Brigitte Kuster had denounced an “obvious misappropriation of donations made by hundreds of thousands of French donors”. On Tuesday, the Parisian deputy congratulated AFP that “perseverance pays”, saying to herself “very happy that the report has highlighted this inconsistency of the town hall of Paris”.
For Emmanuel Grégoire, Brigitte Kuster had a “very biased behavior” within the mission, while it is “rare to have a subject on which the public authorities are so aligned” as that of the reconstruction of the cathedral. The exemption could not be done “without conditions, on the organization of the site and the schedule”, added the first deputy.