The French Senate has begun demolishing the Luxembourg Palace's eastern colonnade to make room for a new parliamentary group after the National Rally and its allies won 14 seats in Sunday's indirect elections, securing group status for the first time in the party's history.
Senate President Gérard Larcher announced that the upper house will relocate to a temporary facility on the outskirts of Paris while workers construct a new hemicycle with 348 individual desks, each equipped with a nameplate and a personal voting lever. «We simply cannot fit another group into the existing chamber without removing the frescoes,» Larcher said. «The frescoes have been removed.»
The 14 new senators have been assigned a permanent queue outside the main debating hall, where they will wait in order of seniority until a seat becomes available. The queue, which stretches along the Rue de Vaugirard, has already become a tourist attraction, with vendors selling commemorative cushions and thermoses to the waiting legislators.
In a related development, the Senate cafeteria has introduced a separate menu for group members, featuring a dish called «the 14-seat stew,» which is served in a bowl large enough for four senators to share. The kitchen has ordered additional tables and chairs to accommodate the new group's staff, who will eat standing up until further notice.
Next week, the Senate will begin a ceremonial demolition of the old group leaders' offices to create a new corridor connecting the queue to the voting booths. The marble will be crushed and sold as souvenirs to fund the construction of a second queue for substitute senators.