The 200 open-air booksellers who line the Seine have been told to remove their boxes due for the … [+] opening of the Olympic Games next year in Paris.
Bouquinistes (second-hand booksellers) are part of the fabric along Paris’ river Seine, but security plans for the Olympic Games in the capital in summer 2024 are asking them to clear out for the duration—something that they are adamantly refusing to do.
For the past 400 years, les bouquinistes have lined one of the most famous rivers in the world with their distinctive green kiosks running 2.5 miles on each side of the Seine, from Pont de Sully to Pont Royal on the Left Bank and from Pont Marie to Pont des Arts on the Right Bank.
They are under pressure to dismantle their kiosks for the opening of the Olympic Games, which will not be held in a stadium but along the river on July 26th. The idea is that there will be crowds lining the river bank watching the athletes move down the river, and security forces have said that it is too much of a headache to search the kiosks for threats to the event during it. The argument is that it would be just too easy to hide something damaging amongst all these books. It is often called one of the world’s largest open-air book market, selling an estimated 300,000 books, paintings and artwork.
However, these booksellers have survived the French revolution, Nazi occupation, a pandemic and, as The Times reported, the threat of Amazon, too. Now, they are also fighting back against Paris’ City Hall.
While the Parisian authorities have offered to help and pay for the dismantling and reinstallation and they have offered the sellers a chance to move to a new temporary book market nearby, the booksellers have refused, explaining that it is a matter of principle and a fight for intellectual freedom. The president of the Cultural Association of the Bouquinistes of Paris, Jérôme Callais, has framed the fight as philosophical and not just about a job—Hemingway and Balzac were both avid fans of the stalls.
Paris’ booksellers have a history of fighting the authorities. Before books were sold along the river, the stalls were a place to find pamphlets and anti-monarchist information—in 1649, the French king decreed that books were not allowed to be sold near the Pont Neuf. During the French Revolution, books pillaged from aristocratic libraries were often found for sale along the river and these stalls were used to spread anti-Nazi propaganda during World War Two, with messages hidden inside certain books and passed from person to person. They even survived a plan to regulate them during Napoleon’s era.
They do not pay rent but must apply for a 5-year license, there are strict requirements on the size and content, with 75% of their stock comprising books and magazines and only 25% made of up tourist souvenirs to retain the literary, intellectual quality of the stalls. They often fight with police who accuse them of not cleaning up the graffiti that appears overnight, complaining that the police should do more to stop the graffiti artists.
Now they are refusing to move by asking the public to sign petitions. For Callais, it is a matter of principle, arguing that they should be celebrated during the Olympics as part of the fabric of everyday Parisian cultural life and shouldn’t be asked to move, particularly as some of the green boxes are too fragile to support a move that is estimated at a cost of $1.66 million.
Paris’ City Hall Is Winning The Fight Against Airbnb Landlords
In preparation for the games, the city also increased its fines for Airbnb landlords who don’t follow the rules, since many landlords will undoubtedly seek to cash in on visiting tourists.
Since 2021, the city of Paris has received €6.5 million ($7.1 million) from fines it has issued to landlords who don’t adhere to the strict maximum of only renting their properties out for 120 nights in any given year (the rule is fewer nights, if the property is a second home) and registering with the city.
However, this revenue for Paris is diminishing each month as landlords fear receiving a fine, which can be as much as $22,000. One landlord recently received a $54,000 fine because he had lots of properties listed on Airbnb. The fine was increased from €16,500 in 2022.
Paris’ city hall said that in 2023 so far it has taken €535,000 from 65 cases that went to court, considerably less than the amounts taken in 2021 and 2022 (€3.5 million and €2.5 million respectively).
In 2021, Paris won $9.6 million from Airbnb after a court case against Airbnb itself, because the company had allowed about 1,000 properties to be listed without following the stringent requirements imposed by City Hall.
The sharing platform is targeted because of the impact it has on the rental market across many European cities, making short and long-term rentals for locals hard to find and because of the perception that it hollows out local communities of long-term invested residents.
