President’s intervention keeps Paris’ riverside bookstalls in place for the Olympics

By THOMAS ADAMSON
Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron has canceled plans to move Paris’ famed second-hand booksellers’ boxes from the banks of the Seine River in preparation for the opening ceremony of the Olympics in July. A statement from the Elysee presidential palace on Tuesday said Macron asked France’s interior minister and Paris police “to ensure that all booksellers are preserved and that none of them be forced to move.” It says Macron considered the riverside book stalls an example of the “living heritage of the capital.” Police told the booksellers last summer that, for security reasons, several hundred of their stalls would be temporarily relocated a few days before the July 26 opening ceremony of the Summer Games.