Containment: Hidalgo announces an "initiative" to reopen independent bookstores

The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo announces "a joint initiative", with other cities, "to authorize the reopening of independent bookstores", closed due to confinement, in an interview with the

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"Culture is essential, it is a mistake to sacrifice it", explains the socialist mayor, who "deplores that certain local shops, more than ever necessary to maintain social ties and fight against the effects of isolation, have been closed, at least initially, like bookstores or hairdressing salons ". 

Culture, "legitimate reason for leaving"

"With other cities, we are going to take a common initiative, as Dijon did, to authorize the reopening of independent bookstores," she adds.

Just after the announcement of the confinement, she had already demanded Thursday that bookstores "remain open", believing that cultural life should be "a legitimate reason for leaving, supporting evidence".

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Petition addressed to President Macron, booksellers who rebel, literary prices postponed ... Initiatives have multiplied in recent days to support bookstores, which are not part of the list of so-called "essential" shops authorized by the government to remain open during containment.

However, they can make deliveries or offer to pick up orders at the store door.

Political sling on businesses

Several mayors of small and medium-sized towns (Perpignan, Brive, Beaune, Valence, Chalon-sur-Saône, Colmar etc.) have issued decrees authorizing the opening of non-food businesses, including bookstores, in their municipality, denouncing the "inequality" of treatment vis-à-vis mass distribution and online sales.

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Associations of elected officials such as the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) have also pleaded for the reopening of these local businesses, and the UDI has encouraged its mayors to take decrees to this effect.

The leader of the LR opposition in Paris Rachida Dati also pleaded Saturday, on Facebook, for the reopening of booksellers and access to culture, which is according to her "an issue in the fight against separatism".