Photo: Wikipedia (Public Domain)
It was a very courteous letter that the Élysée sent us, dated 24 September 2025. We had indeed referred the matter to the Commission d’accès aux documents administratifs (CADA), in order to obtain the document entitled: “Feasibility study for the transport of the Bayeux Tapestry” dated March 2022. We had of course previously requested it from the Ministry of Culture and the DRAC, but they had told us we needed to contact the Élysée directly, providing the email address “secrétariat.presse@elysee.fr”, which was in fact the one we already had. Which we did, of course. It turns out, however, that this address was no longer valid and had been changed to “organisation.presse@elysee.fr”. Nevertheless, we had not received any error message, which suggested that it was working and that the four emails sent had been delivered.
The letter, signed by the chief of staff to the President of the Republic, begins as follows:
“By letter dated 8 September 2025, the Commission d’accès aux documents administratifs (CADA) forwarded to me a request for comments in order to inform its work following your referral reporting a refusal by the Presidency of the Republic to your request to consult the studies certifying that the Bayeux Tapestry can be transported to London without risk.”
And, above all, it continues as follows:
“I first inform you that there was no refusal of communication on the part of the Presidency. Indeed, the email address that was given to you was incorrect, and we therefore did not receive your request.”
So we had been dreaming. Transparency was total, and the Élysée imposed no confidentiality on this study. Indeed, the letter concluded with the observation that: “the documents you are requesting have been published on the website of the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles de Normandie. As such, being public and freely accessible, you may consult them directly”.
The Élysée is thus following Jean Cocteau’s advice: these events are beyond it, and it pretends to be the organiser, rewriting history with unmatched bad faith. Once again, 1984 is not far off.
For we can confirm, without the slightest doubt, that this document was indeed kept secret by the Élysée, the Ministry of Culture and the DRAC.
Even if the four emails sent to the Élysée, using an address that was no longer valid but which had been provided to us by the DRAC Normandie, did not reach their recipient [1], we had received confirmation from Philippe Bélaval, the special adviser to the President of the Republic himself, that this document could not be shared with us. We had also spoken with the Ministry of Culture, which told us it was not opposed to its release, but that the blockage came from higher up.
Let us add that the study was marked strictly confidential in the recent call for tenders, and only participants in that process could specifically request it; that we attempted to obtain it from the restorers we had already interviewed, and that they refused to send it to us due to its confidentiality; that numerous newspapers confirmed this, for example in this AFP dispatch; and that in this article published on 27 August, we wrote: “the only recent study devoted to the feasibility of long-distance transport dates from March 2022. Now, this study, which would be easy to release in order to prove once and for all the absence of serious risk, is being concealed by the Ministry of Culture and the Élysée”: it would have been easy, then, to contradict us by releasing it.
Finally — and this alone would suffice to demonstrate that the Élysée, once again, is talking nonsense — the association Sites & Monuments having filed a “référé mesures utiles” to request the release of this document, the prefect of the Normandy region responded with a defence brief to reject the request, clearly stating that this study was not communicable.
If it was eventually published and made publicly accessible, it is clearly thanks to these actions (CADA referral, référé mesures utiles) and the countless press articles that have been published on this subject.
That the Presidency of the Republic — which usually regards our battles against its poor decisions with complete indifference — now feels compelled to respond to us here with total hypocrisy shows a certain nervousness on the subject. And one can understand it: some Britons are beginning to realise the very real risks faced by the Bayeux Tapestry, as shown — this is just one example — by the article just published in the Telegraph, entitled: “Macron ordered Bayeux tsar to move tapestry ‘whatever the risk’”.