PARIS — A cinematic four-man scheme to steal an estimated €88 million in jewelry from the world’s most-visited museum stunned the globe.
But not those who work there.
“Among colleagues, we’ve been saying for months that it’s incredible that nothing dramatic has happened yet,” Elise Muller, a room supervisor and trade unionist at the Louvre Museum, said in an interview after the robbery.
France — and Paris in particular — may love to showcase the country’s cultural exceptionalism, but critics say the audacious heist is the latest proof that the state hasn’t been putting money where its mouth is when it comes to the Louvre.
Complaints of underfunding at the museum had brewed for months before the robbery on Sunday, which took only minutes.
Louvre General Administrator Kim Pham told lawmakers during a parliamentary hearing in February of the “poor condition, sometimes dilapidated state” of its infrastructure and said it was “absolutely necessary” to install updates, including to overhaul security.
Muller said that union representatives like herself have “repeatedly and with insistence” warned the French Ministry of Culture of the severity of the problems linked to underfunding — including “reducing staff specialized in safety and surveillance” — to no avail.
And a confidential report from France’s top court of auditors, which POLITICO saw parts of, highlighted “persistent” delays in replacing security equipment such as cameras — one-third of the rooms in the Louvre wing where the heist took place reportedly have none.
The audit, which is conducted on a regular basis, said the rate at which the museum’s security infrastructure was becoming obsolete outpaced the investments made to address the problem.
Though French President Emmanuel Macron announced plans earlier this year for a €700 million to €800 million, privately funded effort to modernize the museum, those changes aren’t expected to be finished until 2031.
Peter Fowler, CEO of the British Westminster Group, which handles security for the Tower of London, said he suspected complacency was a factor that the robbers took advantage of.
“How easy it was … shows you how lax the security was,” he said.
When asked for comment on allegations of security failures, representatives for the museum referred POLITICO to an online statement, which quoted the French culture minister saying that the Louvre’s safety mechanisms had been “operational.”
‘We were defeated’
More than 230 years since Louis XVI was guillotined just outside the Louvre, there are again calls for heads to roll.
The first scalp the Parisian left and far right are gunning for is that of Culture Minister Rachida Dati, a fiery, outspoken conservative who plans to run for Paris mayor in next year’s election.
Dati admitted that the success may have been partly tied to administrative shortcomings, but she argued that responsibility was shared after “40 years of abandonment during which problems were swept under the rug.”
“We always focused on the security of cultural institutions for visitors, much less for that of the artworks,” Dati said in an interview with broadcaster M6.
There were also calls for the Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, to step down.
Des Cars delivered her first public remarks since the heist on Wednesday before the cultural committee in the French Senate, the upper house of parliament.
Des Cars faced tough questions challenging her leadership despite being grilled in the Senate, where debates are typically more courteous than the rowdier, more powerful directly elected National Assembly.
Over two hours, the stern-looking 59-year-old curator — showing the strain of what have been the most trying days of her career — spoke with gravitas, attempting, not without difficulty, to assert that the Louvre’s security procedures had been properly followed despite the break-in’s success.
“Despite our efforts, we were defeated,” she said.
Des Cars added that she has throughout her career tried to draw attention “to the state of deterioration and general obsolescence of the Louvre, its buildings and its infrastructure.”
In the heist’s aftermath, several press reports alleged financial mismanagement by des Cars and suggested she had allocated resources to nonurgent needs, including a luxurious dining hall. Des Cars said the accusations had been “distorted” and amounted to “personal attacks.”
The aforementioned dining room, she pushed back, was designed to be a “meeting room which is not exclusively reserved for the Louvre’s president.”
She also disputed aspects of the leaked auditors’ report, insisting that there had been no delays in planned investments to upgrade security and that the document did not yet reflect new measures she intended to present.
During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Macron called on his ministers to “keep their cool” amid the uproar surrounding the Louvre heist while investigations continue.
Macron the builder
The Louvre renovation was supposed to be, much like the restoration of the Notre-Dame Cathedral following the devastating fire there five years ago, a crown jewel of Macron’s legacy. (But one that thieves wouldn’t be able to run off with.)
Earlier this year, he announced plans for a “new Louvre Renaissance” — an expensive overhaul of the museum to update its infrastructure and security as well as move its most-visited painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” into its own dedicated room.
The project has now taken on added urgency. Macron has requested proposals to accelerate implementation of its security-related aspects — including next-generation surveillance cameras, enhanced perimeter detection and a new central security control room — to be on his desk by next week, government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said Wednesday.
That, of course, comes at a cost.
And for Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s fragile minority government, which faces an uphill battle in its attempt to rein in public finances while also investing billions in priorities like defense and reindustrialization, museum security may not seem like the most pressing reason to dip into state coffers
“There are budgetary constraints, but financial promises for the Louvre have been made, and they need to be kept,” said Valérie Baud, who represents the Louvre’s personnel on the museum’s board of directors.
“The Louvre is 68 percent self-funded, which is huge. As for the rest of the budget, the state can no longer impose cuts on the museum,” she added.
The post A fiasco at the Louvre was inevitable appeared first on Politico.
