Alexis Corbière and Alexandre Portier, the French MPs overseeing the government commission investigating the shocking October 19, 2025, Louvre jewel heist, have accused the museum of deprioritizing security at the museum.
The full parliamentary report was released today and also casts doubt on French president Emmanuel Macron’s nearly $1 billion plan to revamp the Louvre, which he announced in January 2025 (nine months before the heist) and referred to as a “new renaissance” for the museum, the world’s most-visited art museum.
Macron’s visit followed the release of a leaked memo written by Laurence de Cars, then the director of the Louvre (she resigned in February of this year), alerting French culture minister Rachida Dati (who also stepped down in February) of a “proliferation of damage in museum spaces, some of which are in very poor condition.”
As noted in Le Figaro, the damning May 13 report is based on over 20 hearings and roundtables with some 100 insiders, conducted over the past five months. The commission spoke with museum professionals, local officials, and former ministers who collectively sounded the alarm regarding the Louvre’s ongoing security issues, which led to thieves entering the Louvre in broad daylight and absconding with nine pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $102 million in less than eight minutes. The heist was one of the defining events in the art world last year.
Security, the report revealed, had been “relegated to the background,” despite two audits completed in 2017 and 2019, years before the jewel heist. The 2019 audit prompted a Security Equipment Master Plan, but it was apparently not implemented in a timely fashion by de Cars’s predecessor, Jean-Luc Martinez.
Corbière and Portier’s report argues for several practical changes: museum directors should be elected by boards (which would include MPs), rather than by Presidential decree; the new Security Fund, established by Dati after the Louvre heist, should be seeded with more than its current $35 million initial endowment; and the Ministry of Culture’s Security, Safety, and Audit mission should be better staffed.
