Workers at the Louvre Museum are called to a strike starting this Monday, which could be extended for the following days as a sign of protest against the working conditions and the lack of resources, in a context of heated controversies over the dilapidated state of some of its installations and the theft of the crown jewels of France which suffered in October.
“There is such a level of exasperation that everything indicates that the terms are preparing for a very powerful strike”, declared the CGT representative at the Louvre museum, Christian Galani, whose union is one of the strike callers with the CFDT and Sud.
Galani stressed the need to “prioritize, establish a hierarchy emergency measures that need to be implemented, which leads us to focus on what essential, that is to say the state of disrepair of the building and the security of the institution”.
Furthermore, the trade unionist pointed out that over the last 15 years, more than 200 jobs at the Louvre Museumwhile the number of visitors has multiplied to make it the most visited in the world. Note that the Louvre welcomed 8.7 million visitors in 2024, including 69% were foreigners.
In this sense, Galani stressed that the unions oppose the “differentiated pricing system” that the museum will open next January, because “it creates unacceptable discrimination between citizens of the European Economic Area and others”.
From January 14 the price for external residents of the European Economic Area will go from 22 to 32 eurosi.e. an increase of 45%, a surcharge proposed as assistance in financing the renewal of national heritage. The abandonment of this price increase for foreigners, the creation of 200 positions of work in the security sector, the salary increase or the end of the current pyramidal and compartmentalized governance model are some of the union demands.
A decision that the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, justified by specifying that she wanted “non-EU visitors to pay more for their entry and that this surcharge serves to finance the renovation of national heritage.
“Strengthening the heritage of the largest museum in the world”
For its part, the Ministry of Culture announced this Sunday in a press release that it had instructed the president of the public establishment Reconstruct Notre Dame, Philippe Jost, to carry out a two-month mission to propose “measures and necessary changes meet the identified challenges and strengthen the heritage of largest museum in the world.
Jost, who will act under the direction of the president of the Louvre museum, Laurence des Cars, and in close collaboration with the museum staff and the General Directorate of Heritage and Architecture of the Ministry of Culture, you will need to present your recommendations initials at the end of February 2026.
This announcement comes the day before call for strike at the Louvre, which was in turn called one day after learning that on November 27 Several hundred old books were damaged due to flooding caused by pipe breakdown whose state of disrepair was known to the library of antiquities.
On November 17, the museum closed an office and, as a precaution, a gallery of Greek antiques which is located below, after detecting fragility problems in certain beams in this area of the complex.
But what has sparked the most controversy in recent weeks is the spectacular theft of which he was the victim on October 19, during which a group of thieves entered the Apollo Gallery in the middle of the day They wore jewels from the crown of France. The four members of the commando were arrested, but the jewelry was not recovered.
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