Paris flea-market closes ranks against the Duke of Westminster
PARIS (AFP) — Traders at Paris's famous Saint-Ouen flea market are protesting against their landlord, the Duke of Westminster, accusing him of driving them out of business with exorbitant rent hikes.
More than 400 stall-holders at the market, in a winding complex of streets just north of the Paris ring road, donned black T-shirts bearing the slogan "Your flea-markets in danger", to mark the start of a World Antiques Fair.
"We're afraid we'll end up with people selling pseudo-antiques just to cover the cost of being here," said Marc Maisons, who has run a stall at the "puces" -- French for flea market -- since the late 1980s, specialising in 19th-century architectural decoration.
"And that would mean we'd lose our soul," Maisons said late Friday. "The English are very tough in business, they have come in with a steamroller. But the puces are part of our heritage and we're not going to let ourselves be walked all over."
Every weekend some 150,000 visitors crowd into the windy lanes of the 120-year-old Saint-Ouen antique and bric-a-brac markets, which are described as the biggest in the world.
The Duke of Westminster -- one of Britain's richest men -- acquired control of the Serpette and Paul-Bert sections of the antiques market in 2005. In 2004 the combined rental values of the 420 pitches there amounted to 3.6 million euros (five million dollars).
Eric Hautrive, a lawyer acting for some 150 traders, says the owner is trying to renegotiate their leases to hike rents by 35 to 70 percent, and remove a cap on the extra traders can be charged for property management.
Traders says the hikes are especially unwelcome as the antiques market was already in the doldrums as a result of the strength of the euro against the dollar, as US clients account for around half their business.
"Antiques have become a luxury. We are a microcosm of survivors here. We just can't bear that kind of an increase," said Maisons, who argues that rents are already as high as the most chic parts of central Paris.
Driving the protest movement is a fierce suspicion that the new owners want to overhaul the flea-market to increase their return on investment.
"If they could, the owners would just knock all of this down and build a big shopping centre," charged Hautrive.
"The puces is like one big family, with its fights and bickering. But right now they are united against the invader, like the village of Asterix the Gaul," said Hautrive.
According to the lawyers, the new owners have no right under French commercial law to impose new lease terms.
"We just want to see the law applied properly," said Hautrive's partner Isabelle Chene. "These are just very sweet people who have been doing this job for years and want to carry on doing it."
But several dealers have been denied the renewal of their lease after rejecting the owner's offer.
One of the traders now fighting an expulsion order is Pascal Weitz, 43, a chemist by training who moved into antique dealing at the puces 27 years ago, specialising in lights and mirrors, but also rare furniture.
"Legally speaking, their offer was not worth the paper it was written on. They thought they could intimidate people who didn't know their rights.
"But I am not going anywhere, and I want the same lease, down to the letter," said Weitz.
"We went round see people one by one and told them 'Don't sign'. We have our traditions, our business ethic, our history, and we need to protect them. People like us just the way we are."
The duke's company Grosvenor Continental Europe said in a statement that "only a few tenants who failed to respect their contractual obligations have received letters of non-renewal."
However it added that the new investors "are convinced that the business conducted on these two markets as well as the puces as a whole can be strongly dynamised."