Stained glass windows of Notre-Dame: a few additional thoughts

In the opinion of the lawyers we consulted, the appeal to the administrative court by the association Sites & Monuments against the contract awarded by the public establishment responsible for the conservation and restoration of Notre-Dame (see the article) has every chance of succeeding for the obvious reason that the aim here is not to conserve the cathedral but quite the opposite. Conservation means restoring Viollet-le-Duc’s stained glass windows (which, incidentally, has already been done). Removing them and replacing them is the opposite of conservation (you don’t have to be very good at English to understand that).

But this case may not only concern the administrative court.

Indeed, according to the article 432-15 of the French penal code : "The act, by a person holding public authority or entrusted with a public service mission, a public accountant, a public depositary or one of their subordinates, of destroying, misappropriating or embezzling a deed or a security, or public or private funds, or effects, documents or securities in lieu thereof, or any other object which has been entrusted to them because of their functions or mission, shall be punished by ten years’ imprisonment and a fine of €1,000,000, which may be increased to double the proceeds of the offence.
The fine shall be increased to €2,000,000 or, if it exceeds that amount, to double the proceeds of the offence, where the offence is committed by an organised gang.
Attempting to commit the offences referred to in the preceding paragraphs shall be subject to the same penalties."

We can therefore read in particular that: ‘The act, by a person [...] entrusted with a public service mission [...] of [...] misappropriating [...] public funds [...] entrusted because of his or her duties or mission is punishable by". However, the public institution of Notre-Dame is entrusted with a public service mission, specified very precisely by the Law of 29 July 2019.
In Article 9, which establishes the public institution, its mission is defined as follows: "to ensure the management, coordination and realisation of studies and operations contributing to the conservation and restoration of the cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris [1]".

There is no ambiguity, especially since we can read in Article 2 of the same law that the funds collected must "exclusively" finance the conservation and restoration work on Notre-Dame, and that this work must preserve "the historical, artistic and architectural interest of the monument". The work of Viollet-le-Duc, which is classified along with the cathedral, is widely recognised as contributing to its "historical, artistic and architectural" interest. Removing some of the stained glass windows that he drew and replacing them with contemporary ones is the exact opposite of the mission of the public institution as defined by law.

The purpose of the public institution is not respected by this work, and therefore it cannot in any way be the project owner [2] Since the salaries of the public institution are paid from its budget, and the budget consists of public money, one may reasonably ask whether this is not a case that falls under the article of the penal code cited above.
Only penal proceedings could confirm this, or not. It is to be hoped that these will take place in parallel with the actions before the administrative courts.
We have asked the public establishment what it has to say in response to this question, but we have not received a reply.

The obstinacy of the President of the Republic, which we have already emphasised on several occasions, is now even more incomprehensible. Because justice is often very slow, and the Sites & Monuments association is determined to go all the way, in two procedures, to the Council of State if necessary, it is obvious that the final judgements will not be handed down for several months, or even several years, well beyond the scheduled date for the completion of the new stained glass windows, with a very high risk of them being rejected. Will he take the risk of launching their manufacture (3.7 million euros, not counting dismantling and installation), a huge waste of public money, and even more so if the courts ban it? Not to mention that the fairly widespread opposition to this project desired by Emmanuel Macron may well not survive his departure from the Elysée.

Everything we have written above definitely argues for a rapid and definitive end to this headlong rush.