French Parliament approves Notre Dame restoration bill
France’s Parliament voted on Tuesday in favour of a law to restore the damaged roof of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Three months after fire destroyed the roof and spire of Paris’s Notre-Dame Cathedral, French MPs voted to approve controversial proposals on how to go about rebuilding the famous church.
Tuesday’s vote was not without controversy, as politicians squabbled for months over the details of the restoration project.
While it consists largely of creating special committees and administrative bodies, the bill essentially provides the legal basis for what has already been proposed by President Emmanuel Macron and the French government.
While lawmakers were united in support of this objective, they were more divided on what the bill meant for the timeline, design and funding of the restoration work.
The National Assembly, the country’s lower house, controlled by En Marche, overruled the Senate to ultimately pass the bill. But the final text did not directly address the architectural form of the reconstruction and in turn, the spire design, undetermined.
The “aim is to give Notre-Dame a restoration appropriate for the place it has in the hearts of the French people and in the entire world,” Culture Minister Franck Riester said.
