(Paris) The town hall of Paris undertakes not to cut down any tree at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, announced Monday one of its assistants, in the face of the controversy aroused by a project to redevelop the district which threatened twenty trees , sometimes centuries old.
Posted at 3:06 p.m.
“There will be no tree felling, the commitment is made by Anne Hidalgo”, assured on Twitter Christophe Najdovski, the assistant for green spaces and biodiversity.
“The project will be reviewed so that each tree is preserved,” he said, trying to extinguish the controversy born in recent days because of the “OnE” project, which planned to vegetate and “pedestrianize” the surroundings. of the Trocadéro and the Eiffel Tower, while removing certain trees to build, in particular, luggage storage for visitors and premises for employees.
These future developments have aroused the opposition of several associations and personalities. A petition launched on the change.org site, and relayed by the very popular radio and television host Nagui, the journalist Hugo Clément or the former boss of Medef (the employers’ union, editor’s note) Laurence Parisot, brought together more 90,000 signatures since Saturday.
Faced with this start of the fire, the town hall had already tried to calm things down through the voice of the first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire, who assured on Saturday that “no century-old tree will be cut down”.
Monday evening on Twitter, the socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo shared the message of Mr. Najdovski promising to abandon any plan of felling, without distinguishing between century-old trees and others.
The elected environmentalists of Paris have published a press release, demanding “that the location of the luggage storage and premises be re-examined” for the employees, whom they wish to “move to sites which do not require the felling of trees” .
“Each tree counts and we will continue to remain vigilant in order to avoid any felling, whether on the Eiffel Tower site or on other urban projects of the City of Paris”, insisted the group, an ally of the socialists within the municipal majority.
According to the town hall, the redevelopment of the Eiffel Tower district should make it possible to plant more than 200 new trees and create 1.6 hectares of green space.
Mme Hidalgo has made greening the capital a major goal of his second term, with promises to plant an additional 170,000 trees or create five “urban forests” and four new parks.