The chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Culture, Laurent Lafon, said on Tuesday, after a visit to the Louvre’s security facilities, that the museum’s safety standards were “not up to what one would expect from a modern museum.”
“There are many improvements to be made,” said the centrist senator to the press, surrounded by a delegation on the museum’s forecourt.
“The organization of security does not meet the standards one would expect from a museum today, and it is essential to finally carry out the necessary work, whether on the network or on video surveillance,” he added.
However, France's Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, for her part, has ruled out making snap decisions about beefing up security at the Louvre Museum as detectives continued their hunt on Wednesday for the thieves who broke into the building and made off with nearly €100 million worth of gems.
"This is too serious a matter to rush into anything," Dati told a panel of France's senators. "I am waiting for objective evidence."
Dati pleaded for time to make a measured response to the raid after a team of senators inspected the site of a theft that has highlighted lax attitudes to guarding many of the planet's most famous treasures in the museum.
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"We always learn from our failures," Dati told the Senate Culture Committee in Paris.
Heist of the century
Thieves took less than eight minutes to steal the jewels. They used a basket lift to scale the Louvre’s façade and forced open a window.
Once inside the Galérie d’Apollon, they smashed display cases and made their way back out before speeding away on scooters.
Louvre chief Des Cars admits 'terrible failure' at museum during jewel heist
“If such a spectacular theft took place, it’s a failure — a failure for everyone,” said Dati during her two-and-a-half hour session with the committee which was originally scheduled for thrashing out proposals for the 2026 budget.
“There were indeed security breaches and we will have to address them.
“Such an event cannot go without consequences or immediate action. We cannot just say: ‘Move along, nothing to see here.’”
While defending the museum’s internal protection systems before the same committee, Louvre president Laurence des Cars conceded that there had been weaknesses in the museum’s external video surveillance system.
“We did not detect the arrival of the thieves early enough,” she told the senators.
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On 26 October, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau confirmed that investigators arrested two men the previous day. One was taken into custody as he was preparing to leave the country from Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport and the other was detained in the Paris region.
They are being held on suspicion of organised theft and criminal conspiracy.
“For reasons of confidentiality, we will not go into the details of what we saw during the tour," Lafon added.
"But we left this visit with the firm conviction that it is now necessary to implement as quickly as possible this master security plan."
(with newswires)
