Emmanuel Macron has decided to come to the rescue of the bouquinistes (booksellers) on the banks of the Seine in Paris. On Tuesday, February 13, the French president asked the Paris interior minister and police prefect that none of these open-air booksellers be forced to move their famous green boxes during the opening ceremony of this summer's Olympic Games in the capital.

For the past seven months, the Police Prefecture and Paris City Hall had been calling for the booksellers to be moved during this period, for safety reasons. The sellers feared that their famous wooden crates, often fragile, would be damaged during dismantling, transport and reassembly. Not to mention the fact that Paris City Hall had not planned on compensating them financially.

"Noting that no consensus-based and reassuring solution has been identified with these stakeholders, [the president] is showing them his attention, considering that this is a living heritage of the capital," said a source at the Elysée, adding that Macron has asked for the security arrangements to be "adapted accordingly."

Jérôme Callais, president of the Association of Paris Bouquinistes, is finally breathing a sigh of relief. "It's wonderful! We thank Emmanuel Macron from the bottom of our hearts. He has put an end to seven months of nightmare and uncertainty," said Callais. Every January, he sends his best wishes to the French leader. "He wrote back to me very recently: 'You can count on me, most cordially,'" said a delighted Callais. He's the president "closest to the book trade that we've ever had," he added. According to Callais, Macron and his wife were regular visitors – especially before he was elected president in 2017 – to buy books and talk with his colleagues.

This presidential decision comes at exactly the time when things were about to get ugly. The Association of Paris Bouquinistes was putting the finishing touches to the appeal that was to be lodged with the Paris Administrative Court to prevent the boxes from being removed.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati, who is also an elected member of the Paris municipal opposition, was delighted to welcome the decision on X: "I thank the president of the republic for having listened to the arguments of the bouquinistes and their demands in view of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, supported from the outset by all the elected members of the Changer Paris group, in particular Anne Biraben, Jean-Pierre Lecoq and Aurélien Véron."

At the Paris City Council meeting of October 3, 4, 5 and 6, 2023, these right-wing members opposed Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo's proposal to maintain the bookshops during the Olympics, arguing that they were "part of the soul of Paris and its identity and should be promoted during this global event, not undermined."

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