- Eiffel Tower GM resigns amid staff sidelining controversy.
- Investigation confirms no explicit exclusion request, women still sidelined.
- GM denies direct instruction, cites departure protecting employees.
Three weeks after a Hindu religious delegation’s visit to the Eiffel Tower sparked controversy over female staff allegedly being sidelined, Patrick Branco-Ruivo, the general manager of the Eiffel Tower operating company SETE, has announced that he will leave his post at the end of the year.
Branco-Ruivo, who has held the position for eight years, said his departure should not be seen as an admission of sole responsibility for the incident. In a message to Eiffel Tower employees, he reiterated that he had never instructed anyone to remove or replace women during the delegation’s visit.
He reportedly decided to leave to “protect the employees and preserve the team”.
Investigation Finds No Explicit Request
The General Inspectorate of the City of Paris (IGVP), which was tasked with investigating the incident on September 8, began its work the following day. It conducted 14 interviews and examined documents provided by SETE, according to a report by Le Parisien.
According to the investigation, there was no explicit request from the Hindu religious delegation to exclude women from the entire procession.
The report said the initial request communicated to SETE concerned avoiding physical contact between religious figures and women. No written document or email was found requesting the exclusion of female employees.
How Women Were Sidelined
According to the investigation, security control posts were assigned to men on the morning of the delegation’s visit, along with positions overseeing the agents and elevator exits.
During part of the delegation’s ascent to the North pillar, reception and customer relations employees were reportedly asked to temporarily leave the group. A female employee working for a cleaning service was asked to wait until her break, while another woman was replaced in an elevator during the group’s descent.
The report concluded that women were indeed excluded during the visit.
The inspectorate attributed the situation to an internal process in which a requirement to avoid contact was gradually interpreted as a need to assign male employees to various positions. This interpretation was then extended to the point of removing or replacing female employees who were already in place.
‘The Message Got Distorted’
A Parisian elected official compared the sequence of events to the childhood game of “telephone”, saying that an instruction passed verbally became distorted as it moved through different levels.
The inspectorate similarly found that information being circulated at multiple levels was confused with formal validation. As operational instructions moved through the hierarchy, they were gradually treated as established procedures.
Individual Responsibility Also Flagged
The investigation described the incident as a case of “collective dysfunction” but also said the chain of events did not erase individual responsibility.
The report pointed to differing levels of responsibility in a series of errors involving judgement, validation and execution.
Branco-Ruivo’s departure comes amid the fallout from the controversy, although he has maintained that he never ordered women to be removed or replaced during the delegation’s visit.
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