Notre-Dame de Paris under construction in September 2020 -

Francois Mori / AP / SIPA

Donations for the reconstruction of Notre-Dame must go entirely to the site.

They should no longer finance the operation of the public establishment, the Court of Auditors demanded on Wednesday.

After the publication of a report on the Notre-Dame site, the president of the Court of Auditors Pierre Moscovici urged the Ministry of Culture to allocate the entire 825 million euros of donations and pledges to the works catering.

An administrative inquiry requested

The law of July 2019, he recalled, provides that donations are only intended for this restoration.

However, a small part, of the order of 5 million euros, is used for various operating costs such as communication, he explained.

"The Covid crisis could weaken" some donors who could retract, argued Pierre Moscovici.

Of the 825 million euros collected, 640 are still at the stage of the promises.

He also called for an administrative inquiry "now", in order to unravel the "tangled responsibilities" between the State, the Center for National Monuments and the bishopric over the cathedral, which may have contributed to the building not having been better secured.

"Prevent that from happening again"

"The explosion (of responsibilities) which is due to the dual status of Notre-Dame" (public monument and church) may have contributed to poor anticipation, "said Pierre Moscovici.

"We do not understand that the Ministry of Culture did not initiate an administrative investigation" to study the reasons for the dysfunctions in the years before the fire: "insufficient vigilance" and possible "failure" in the maintenance of the building, which was then the subject of a restoration of its spire.

The stake is for the future, to "prevent that from happening again" in the 96 other cathedrals owned by the State.

"We therefore need a clarification, a flattening, without waiting for the reopening" of the building in 2024, he added.

Of accidental origin

According to the first results revealed in the summer of 2019 of the judicial investigation still underway to determine the causes of the fire, it would probably not be of criminal origin but accidental: short circuit, butt left on the site .

But poor maintenance of the electrical installations and a series of malfunctions on the night of the disaster certainly contributed to making the fire more serious than it should have been.

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  • Court of Audit

  • Pierre moscovici

  • Paris

  • Notre Dame de Paris

  • Fire

  • Culture