Paris (AFP)

Paris PS mayor Anne Hidalgo on Wednesday gave up installing a reception center for crack users near a school in the 20th arrondissement, and is delighted with "state support" to develop "units of therapeutic care".

"After in-depth discussions with the state services, a joint decision was taken not to set up (a therapeutic unit) on the site of rue Pelleport," said the town hall in a press release.

A few hours earlier, Prime Minister Jean Castex had given the green light for "the creation of new places dedicated to the reception and rest" of crack users in the capital.

But he had underlined the "obvious difficulty" posed according to him by one of these four sites envisaged by the town hall, adjoining a school in the XXth arrondissement and against which the residents mobilized.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal was even clearer, judging "impossible to install one of these rooms in the immediate vicinity of a school as has been proposed by the mayor of Paris".

"The state services instructed the Pelleport site with our services, the mayor had not rendered a final arbitration, it was in a list of proposals", reacted the first deputy of Anne Hidalgo, Emmanuel Grégoire ( PS), contacted by AFP.

"The government has not twisted our arm," he said, acknowledging the "questions" and "concerns" raised by the project.

Last Thursday, a member of Anne Hidalgo's entourage told AFP that she would not give up on the project.

At the beginning of September, the discovery of the planned site had triggered an outcry from residents of Pelleport Street, who demonstrated two Saturdays in a row.

Demonstration against the installation of a reception center for crack users in the Pelleport district, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, September 11, 2021 THOMAS COEX AFP / Archives

If this site is abandoned, "the town hall of the 20th arrondissement and the City of Paris have decided to find other sites for the care of consumers", specifies the City Hall, which welcomes "good news: the overall approach defended by the City, which will pragmatically integrate supervised consumption as a tool to support withdrawal, is finally the subject of a political consensus ", estimates the municipality.

© 2021 AFP