The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has decided to abandon the planned relocation of the book boxes belonging to the book sellers along the Seine quays for the opening ceremony of the next summer’s Olympic Games in Paris., stated the Elysee Palace. No alternative and consensual solution was found for them to relocate the book boxes. Therefore, the President did not want any of them to be forced to move.
The book sellers had been informed last summer by the Paris police prefecture that for security reasons, several hundred book boxes installed along the quays would have to be temporarily moved a few days before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on July 26 on the Seine. The book sellers had been fighting to keep these boxes in place, sealed in time for the preparations. They felt that many of them would not have survived the relocation, especially after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. With 16 million tourists expected in the capital during the Games, their concern was understandable.
This decision also comes at a time when the Ministry of the Interior once again decreased the maximum number of spectators who can attend the opening ceremony to about 300,000 people. The original project was to open the evening to about a million spectators who would watch the athletes parade and the show designed by Thomas Jolly along the Seine. With increasing doubts about the feasibility of such an event that covers more than 6 kilometers, from the Austerlitz bridge upstream to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, concerns are growing. The Ministry of Sports contradicted the statement that there was no alternative to the ceremony on the Seine with Emmanuel Macron later saying that there were indeed alternative plans available.
