We have just witnessed an episode of misinformation and propaganda that could go down in history, given how quickly it spread and how successful it could have been if we had not fought hard to expose it.
Let us recall the facts: the CNPA, the commission responsible for advising the French minister, particularly on work concerning historic monuments, has spoken out twice on the replacement of the stained glass windows at Notre-Dame. In June 2024, it unanimously opposed the replacement (see article), and in June 2025, it reiterated its opposition, took note of the minister’s decision to override its opposition, and specified what should be done at a minimum if the project were to go ahead (see article).
As the commission’s opinion is advisory (even if, in general, the minister complies with it), there was no obligation to lie about the result.
However, given that the project was so overwhelmingly rejected by the general public, who signed (and continue to sign) the petition we launched in December 2023, by heritage professionals, and by most of the ministry’s civil servants (forced to remain silent by their duty of confidentiality, but who regularly send us their testimonies), it is difficult for the minister to accept a project that is in reality dictated to her by the President of the Republic and which is a blot on an otherwise rather good heritage record (see article).
It therefore remained to deliberately mislead the media in order to make them believe that the CNPA had ‘’iven the green light", as was widely reported in the press.
As some of our fellow journalists confirmed, this was a deliberate attempt to distort the truth. When questioned by them, the ministry replied that the commission had finally approved the project. This was also stated in black and white in the first AFP dispatch, following an article in Le Figaro, and then reported almost unanimously by all the newspapers.
We wrote an initial article to set the record straight, based on our contacts within the commission and on the opinion it had issued. We then decided to interview the members who had participated in the meeting (except for civil servants representing the State who were bound by a duty of confidentiality) and ask them to sign a short, factual statement confirming that they had not given their approval, but were merely reiterating their opposition, which had been formalised last year. Eight out of ten signed (see here).
Thanks to social media, we were able, with the help of the association Sites & Monuments, to drive the point home and reveal more widely what is nothing more than a state lie, so big that it was easy to prove.
Faced with this evidence, Telerama was the first newspaper to publish a correction [1], for which we are grateful. AFP has since published another dispatch: when questioned again, the ministry was forced to acknowledge that the CNPA had not approved the project, but had merely taken note of the desire to proceed. BFMTV, which had itself been misled, published this latest dispatch. It is to be hoped that the newspapers that were misled in good faith will in turn publish the true version.
But the news is not only that the CNPA has not approved the project. It is that the Ministry of Culture deliberately sought to mislead the press. This is obviously not the first or last time that a government has acted in this way. But at a time when facts no longer seem to matter, it is crucial to hold politicians accountable for their lies.
Some people are asking us: what can we do now? There are several possible courses of action: first, if you haven’t already done so, sign the petition, which could very quickly reach 300,000 signatures, which is unprecedented for a heritage campaign. If you have signed the petition, you can also share it widely with your friends and acquaintances and invite them to sign it. Finally, as the fight will also continue in the courts, you can help Sites & Monuments finance the campaign by making a donation from this page, by making a donation to the association (see article 11911). We will not give up, and we will defeat this project.