(Paris) The most famous monument in France closed for a third day in a row. The Eiffel Tower will probably remain inaccessible until Thursday, with the renewable strike launched on Monday by the two unions representing staff appearing to be bogged down.
“There is no chance that it will be unblocked overnight (from Tuesday to Wednesday),” Stéphane Dieu, union representative of the CGT, majority representative of some 360 employees of the CGT, told AFP on Tuesday afternoon. Operating company of the Eiffel Tower (Sete).
The management of Sete “refuses to negotiate” and the City of Paris, its ultra-majority shareholder, “even refuses to receive us”, assures Mr. Dieu to explain why the negotiations ended Tuesday morning.
In the middle of the winter school holidays and five months before the Olympic Games (July 26 – August 11), the standoff between the two unions – CGT and FO – and the municipality has as its object the economic model of Sete, in progress rewriting with an amendment to the public service delegation contract which runs until 2030.
The amendment must be validated in May by the Paris Council. But “if the owner (the town hall) imposes an untenable model, we will show our disapproval in July” during the Olympics, warns Stéphane Dieu.
The two unions had already launched a strike leading to the closure of the Iron Lady on December 27, the hundredth anniversary of the disappearance of Gustave Eiffel.
The fee in question
They criticize the town hall for “seeking profitability at all costs and in the short term” and ask it to be “reasonable in terms of its financial requirements in order to ensure the sustainability of the monument and the company that manages it”.
The economic balance of the Eiffel Tower, which in 2023 returned to higher attendance than it was before COVID-19, with 6.3 million visitors, was weakened by some 120 million euros in shortfalls. win during the two years of health crisis (2020 and 2021).
To cope, Sete was recapitalized to the tune of 60 million euros in 2021. But to the loss of revenue was added an equivalent additional bill – around 130 million euros – for additional costs of renovation work, mainly linked to the current painting campaign, complicated by the discovery of traces of lead.
According to the CGT, the current contract is biased by an “over-evaluation of revenue based on annual attendance targets of 7.4 million visitors”, i.e. “attendance levels never before reached”.
To restore the equation, the adjustment variables are the amount of the fee that Sete pays to the town hall, the price of entries and the budget for the works.
The planned option of increasing prices by 20% does not raise opposition. But interpretations differ as to the evolution of the fee and the envelope of the work.
The CGT estimates that the City requires in the amendment an “exponential increase in its fees, from 8 to 50 million euros per year”, which amounts, according to Stéphane Dieu, to imposing an “ultra-tense model where 40% of the figure “gross business goes directly into royalties”.
But management claims that the amendment lowers the fee compared to the initial contract.
As for the work carried out, “numerous points of corrosion are visible, symptoms of a worrying deterioration of the 135-year-old monument”, the unions worry, deploring the “100 million euros invested for a partial painting campaign with only 3% of the monument stripped.”
The unions, who are demanding the creation of a “special endowment fund” for future work, also accuse Sete and the town hall of postponing the modernization of the elevators and the flickering device.
The closure of the symbol of Paris and France arouses the frustration of thousands of visitors, mainly foreigners (around 80% according to 2023 statistics).
They are automatically reimbursed, Sete assures AFP.