A coffee with Aurélien Véron (head of LR list)

Vice-president of Objectif France, a “republican, liberal and humanist” political movement around civil society and grassroots elected officials, this father is from Paris.
Aged 51 and an executive in a European bank, he lives in the 30st arrondissement after having lived in the XNUMXnd arrondissement for XNUMX years and got involved with Rachida Dati.

What do you criticize the outgoing municipality?
We were proud when we were younger to welcome our foreign or provincial friends to Paris. Today, the city is dirty and, what's more, dangerous. The attacks are increasing. We need an armed municipal police force. And a complete reorganization of cleaning services.

In front of my house, Molière fountain, every morning, on my sidewalk, there are trash cans piling up. The bicycle lanes are poorly designed. There is congestion everywhere. Everyone steps on each other, it's super dangerous. Not counting the scooters.

Another example: the Paris town hall has installed a newspaper kiosk opposite the Pont Neuf against a pedestrian crossing. As a result, when the children go to school, the kiosk prevents them from seeing the street!

And the canopy of the Halles... It was supposed to be floating, transparent, you should be able to walk on its roof. And we end up with a huge thing in pissy yellow which hides the Saint-Eustache church when we are underneath. All this at a cost of 1 billion euros in total. The town hall gave Unibail-Rodamco a free hand without putting business lawyers, consultants, professionals whose job is to negotiate, but clampins, in front of them. The mayor was taken in by a company whose business is negotiation. We must put an end to this amateurism.

The BHV is eating up the entire neighborhood to the detriment of local businesses because Hidalgo is friends with them. But I think they need to be regulated, local residents need to come first. The bosses of Unibail and BHV need to listen to us, they have to, their brand image depends on it. They need Paris, we need them and Paris is a town hall which must be the boss on certain subjects.

The town hall does not do the shopping but its competence is to improve the lives of local residents.
It's great to have LVMH, BHV, but it's the Town Hall that has an authority problem to find the right balance. Yet she has the means to do it.

Are you in favor of pedestrianizing the center?
All cities that are pedestrianized have gradually been transformed, and quite quickly, into commercial areas, intended for mass tourism. The center of Amsterdam has become unlivable, among other things because tourists on foot are flooding there.

The city has become a center of mono-activity, with postcard shops, printed T-shirts, fast food restaurants (kebabs, pizzas, etc.), bars where people party all night, Airbnbs. The local residents no longer want to live there: when they leave their homes they are confronted with a human tide of people who do not live there. It kills the spirit of the place. I don't want that for Paris Center.

Finally, wanting to drive away the car should not be a dogmatic position. You should know that automobiles, in the next ten years, will change their engine (electric, hybrid, liquid hydrogen or others). The car will stop emitting microparticles and will be non-polluting. Which will change anti-pollution thinking.

Paris has lost part of its inhabitants. What do you think ?
Paris is emptying and this will accelerate. According to INSEE, 25% of the population will leave in the next 25 years. If we pedestrianize it, it will perhaps be 50%. It's disheartening to think that Paris is going to become a giant Disneyland. Anne Hidalgo does not realize the damage of total pedestrianization. The pedestrian streets around Beaubourg have completely changed the spirit of the place. It's no longer the same life as before for local residents.

The right is not the worst placed to talk about architectural errors. Under Jacques Chirac and Jean Tiberi, the municipality wanted to transform the Marché des Enfants Rouges into a parking lot. Is the right able to make wiser decisions?

We need to call on urban planners, architects, professionals from the world of art and fine arts and we need to depoliticize these subjects. But I repeat that the current Halles are an architectural error for which we will pay dearly for many years.

What are your proposals?
With the grouping of the first four districts, three town halls will be available. It is necessary to install a single-use counter for elderly people who cannot travel to the town hall of the XNUMXrd arrondissement.
Another idea: create a large bicycle parking lot, particularly in Les Halles, so that people can go to the RER every morning and park in secure parking lots. I also want a global traffic plan to maintain a minimum flow of cars in the capital. We are going to make traffic more fluid thanks to new technologies to make Paris a “Smart City”, an intelligent city. This will free us from a lot of pollution and a lot of stress

Text: Katia Barillot
Photos: ©Anaïs Costet

05.03.20