Thank you, Mr President.
President of the Commission de la Culture, de l'Education et de la Communication, dear Catherine Morin-Desailly,
Mr President of the Finance Committee, dear Vincent Éblé,
Mr President of the Commission nationale du patrimoine et de l'architecture, dear Jean-Pierre Leleux,
Mr Rapporteur of the Committee on Culture, Education and Communication, dear Alain Schmitz,
Mr Albéric De Montgolfier,
Ladies and gentlemen senators,
We all remember where we were on Monday evening, April 15, when we first saw the images of Our Lady set ablaze. That was exactly six weeks ago.
More than a monument, more than a cathedral: it is a part of France, of its history, of its identity.
She’s finally a part of us.
That’s why this fire touched our hearts.
This explains why we shuddered by imagining the worst; by imagining that we might be witnessing the last moments of Our Lady of Paris.
This also explains the extraordinary mobilization that followed – if one can explain a mobilization of such magnitude.
Mobilization of women and men, who, sometimes at the risk of their lives, stopped the burning and saved the exceptional works present in the cathedral.
They are the fire-fighters of Paris, helped and strengthened by their colleagues from the other departments of Ile-de-France, but also the police officers, the agents of the Ministry of Culture, the City of Paris and the diocese. I want to thank them once again for their commitment.
If the vaults are still weakened, the building is now largely saved. We owe it to their professionalism, dedication and courage.
This mobilization is also that of experts, institutions and companies, whose pledges and proposals for assistance in skills have multiplied.
Above all, it is a popular mobilization.
Hundreds of thousands of donations from individuals have flowed from all over France and around the world.
Even today, they continue to reach us.
So we had to create a framework to welcome them.
To accompany, encourage and frame this surge of generosity.
To match this exceptional fervour with an exceptional device.
This is the meaning of the bill for the conservation and restoration of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and establishing a national subscription for this purpose.
Yes, we will restore Notre-Dame de Paris.
The President of the Republic has set a goal: five years.
It is an ambitious, proactive deadline that allows teams to motivate and mobilize all the stakeholders concerned.
In this task that awaits us, we will never confuse speed and precipitation.
We must offer Our Lady a restoration to the height of her splendour, to the height of what she symbolizes.
On a number of points, there is an urgent need to intervene.
On others, we will have to take the time to reflect.
The current situation of Our Lady imposes these two temporalities on us.
It seems to me that this legislation does manage to reconcile them.
So yes, we want to move quickly.
We were blamed for that.
But it was the surge of generosity that triggered quickly!
It was the donations for Our Lady that quickly abounded!
And we had to be able to answer it just as quickly!
That is what we have done.
And I take full responsibility.
Because, what would we have been told if we had let scams, fake websites, fake online jackpots flourish?
If we had not launched the national subscription, when Our Lady belongs to the entire nation?
What would we have been told if we had done nothing?
We were told that the State was failing in its mission.
And we would have been right to tell us.
It is for the State to intervene to protect this common heritage.
It’s not a “sin of pride”, and it’s not “inappropriate”.
It is the responsibility of the State, both to regulate the dedicated national subscription by laying down, by law, the rules applicable to it; and to provide guarantees of security and transparency to the hundreds of thousands of donors, French or foreign.
We owe them that transparency.
I want to thank them very sincerely for their generosity.
They will not be betrayed: their donations will go to Notre-Dame de Paris.
Only and entirely at Notre-Dame de Paris.
To its conservation, restoration, maintenance, short and medium term.
We will see to it, rest assured.
Some people suggest that we already have too much money raised, more than it takes to restore the cathedral.
But while we have already received some donations, others are still waiting for concrete results.
In addition, the total cost of the work has not yet been quantified.
For the time being, work is only focused on securing the building – which, I want to repeat, remains fragile at the vault.
Allow me here to thank, very sincerely, for their dedication and reactivity, the companies which, from Monday evening, with the services of the Ministry of Culture, have undertaken an exceptional work, to safeguard the essential.
Thank you to them and to all their teams, led by Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect of historic monuments, and his team of chief architects who mobilized with him to take emergency measures. And the teams, of course, of the Ministry at the level of the Directorate-General for Heritage and the DRAC Ile-de-France.
Only then will we go to the diagnostic phase and then to the restoration itself.
Under these conditions, it is premature to say that we would have surpluses to manage.
To operate this national subscription, in addition to direct payments to the State, we can count, since April 16, on the mobilization of three foundations recognized of public utility - the Fondation de France, the Fondation du Patrimoine, and the Fondation Notre-Dame - and on that of the Centre of National Monuments, operator of the Ministry of Culture.
I want to thank them.
Agreements may be concluded between the State and each of the three foundations recognised as having public utility – as well as with certain donors.
An amendment adopted at first reading by the National Assembly made it possible to advance the text on this point by clarifying this approach.
In the same spirit of transparency as regards the use of the funds raised, a monitoring committee will be set up.
It will bring together the First President of the Court of Auditors and the Presidents of the Committees on Finance and Culture, the Senate and the National Assembly – dear Vincent Eblé, dear Catherine Morin-Desailly.
This audit must be carried out in cooperation and without prejudice to those of the Court of Auditors.
Moreover, this transparency regarding the monitoring of the subscription and the application of the related tax system was reinforced by the amendments adopted by the National Assembly and the Senate.
First of all, it is transparent with Parliament.
Article 5a provides that the Government shall report to it on the share and amount of donations made in respect of the national subscription resulting in a tax reduction, and on the participation of local and regional authorities.
It’s transparency to the public, too.
Section 7 has been amended to require the publication of a report on the collection, source and use of funds.
Concerning the use of funds, I would like to remind you that the text of the law we are going to debate will not – obviously – infringe the principles of the laws of 1905 and 1907, that is to say, neither the principle of secularism, nor the rights of the cult affected, that is, the division of prerogatives and responsibilities between the State and the Catholic Church.
All donations will thus go through the national subscription, with the exception of those that have the specific purpose of financing the restoration of property belonging to the diocese or, more generally, the needs related to the exercise of worship.
This law, I said, must guarantee the transparency of national subscription. And it must also set the rules.
For individuals, the law introduces a specific tax system to accompany their donations.
I would like to commend the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, and the Minister of Action and Public Accounts, Gérald Darmanin, for the work we have done in close collaboration.
Within the limit of EUR 1000, the draft law increases the rate of reduction in income tax on donations and payments made by individuals to the public treasury, the National Monuments Centre and the three foundations mentioned above from 66% to 75%.
This provision, I would remind you, only concerns individuals or sole proprietorships.
It was designed to cover donations from the largest number of French people.
It is precisely limited in time, with a tax benefit that concerns donations made between 16 April and 31 December 2019; and in amounts, with a donation limit eligible for the tax reduction set at €1,000.
These limits do not prevent giving beyond this date, or above this ceiling. But in this case, the tax advantage associated with the donation will be that of ordinary law.
Local and regional authorities and their groupings will also be able to participate in the financing of the works, beyond their scope of territorial competence.
Article 4 removes any uncertainty arising from the usual rules of jurisdiction or the condition of local interest.
The Minister of Action and Public Accounts, Gérald Darmanin, will have the opportunity to repeat that community spending in favour of Notre-Dame will be considered capital spending.
They will therefore not be taken into account when calculating the annual ceiling for operating expenditure of 1.2%.
On all these subjects, I said, we will go quickly…
But we won’t rush.
Restoration will not be done in haste.
It must be at the height, as I said and I repeat, of the splendour of Notre-Dame de Paris.
We must ensure that this restoration is exemplary.
We will be able to take into account the opinions of heritage professionals, curators, architects, historians, academics, and all those involved in the maintenance, conservation and restoration of our monuments.
We will listen to them. We will trust them.
There must be time for reflection, so that we can make all the choices that are necessary, and to make them in due course.
I want to anticipate them, as far as possible, in the legislation, to avoid having to come back to you tomorrow.
We are thinking about the optimal organization to carry out this project with regard to the objectives set.
The choice of organization is not yet finalized, but it is moving forward.
We are giving ourselves the opportunity to create a new public institution for that purpose.
Whatever the choice of organisation chosen, it will make it possible to take into account the opinion of heritage professionals through a scientific council, which will be the guarantor of the scientific and historical quality of the restoration.
In any case, I want to make three crucial points before you.
- The mastery of this project will be carried out, in accordance with the rules of art, by the chief architects of historical monuments – in this case, Philippe Villeneuve, who is in charge of Notre-Dame de Paris.
- As should be the case in a project of this magnitude, the National Commission for Heritage and Architecture, my dear Jean-Pierre, will be regularly consulted on the progress of the work and the choices for restoration. I would like to take this opportunity to once again greet Jean-Pierre, and of course Catherine Morin-Desailly. And I greet Roger Karoutchi, who is not part of this commission but whom I greet anyway! Your committee will meet on 4 July to discuss operations related to Notre Dame, as I was able to announce in the Committee on Culture, Education and Communication.
- Finally, whatever the choice of organization is, it must make it possible to take into account the legitimate interests of the main stakeholders interested in restoration, starting with the diocese and the City of Paris.
Ladies and gentlemen senators,
If no restoration of a historic monument had yet resulted in such a legislative adaptation, it is because we are facing an exceptional situation.
The project ahead is ambitious and unique.
In order to achieve this, we want to give ourselves the opportunity to relax certain provisions, essentially procedural.
But it goes without saying that the flexibilities to the laws in force will be strictly proportionate to the needs of the yard.
There is no question of using the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris to trample on French and European heritage, environmental or urban planning law.
This was obviously never the intention of the Government.
I want to say it again and again: as Minister of Culture, I will be tirelessly the guarantor of the protection of heritage.
And I am committed to engaging all the ministers involved.
The interdepartmental work of the coming weeks will allow us to define, together, the flexibilities and adaptations to be foreseen, which will mainly concern procedural questions, without calling into question the substance of the applicable legislation.
At each moment, we will impose the preservation of the historical, artistic, architectural and symbolic interest of the monument.
Thank you.