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The head of the company that operates the Eiffel Tower will leave his post at the end of the year, the firm announced Tuesday, following an internal review into a decision to keep female employees away from the Paris monument during a private tour by a Hindu religious movement.
Patrick Branco Ruivo, who has led the landmark's operating company since 2018, is stepping down after the inquiry identified what the company described as operational failings and shortcomings in the arrangements for the visit. According to SETE, the firm that manages the 330-metre tower, those flaws resulted in the unacceptable sidelining of women on the site — an incident that has dominated French public debate for weeks.
The controversy dates back to early September, when members of the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha, known as BAPS, visited the tower during celebrations marking the opening of a traditional Hindu stone temple in the Paris region. Female staff were asked to stay away while the group toured the monument, a step management later acknowledged was a mistake.
The decision provoked an immediate and angry response from employees at one of the world's most visited attractions. On September 8, workers walked off the job in protest, forcing the tower to close to visitors. The walkout turned a staffing dispute into a national talking point and put the tower's management under intense scrutiny.
The reaction extended well beyond the Eiffel Tower itself. Politicians from across France's political spectrum condemned the move as an assault on the country's core principle of gender equality, with figures on the left and right alike describing it as an unacceptable concession to a religious organisation. The episode tapped into long-running debates in France about secularism and the place of religion in public life.
BAPS, a global religious and civic organisation within the Swaminarayan sect — a conservative branch of Hinduism — has ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The group had been holding festivities near the French capital to inaugurate a traditional stone temple, and the Eiffel Tower visit was part of those celebrations.
Under pressure, the organisation issued a statement expressing sincere apologies to anyone who might have been hurt or inconvenienced by the situation. It sought to distance itself from the decision to remove the female workers, which had been taken by the tower's management rather than the visiting group.
The internal SETE review concluded that the arrangement stemmed from breakdowns in how the visit was planned and executed, rather than from any formal policy. Announcing the departure of its chief executive, the company said the circumstances that led to women being excluded were unacceptable and that lessons had to be drawn from what went wrong.
Ariel Weil, who chairs SETE, said she had called for measures and training programmes designed to promote gender equality within the organisation. Her comments signalled an effort to move beyond damage control and address the deeper questions the affair raised about how the company handles sensitive requests from private visitors.
For Branco Ruivo, the departure marks the end of a tenure that began in 2018 and spanned one of the most turbulent periods in the monument's modern history, including the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent efforts to rebuild visitor numbers. His exit had been widely anticipated once the internal findings were delivered.
The affair has also brought wider scrutiny on BAPS's activities in France, with commentators and officials questioning the influence the organisation was able to exert over arrangements at a symbol of the French Republic. The group's ties to India's political leadership added a diplomatic dimension to what might otherwise have remained an industrial relations matter.
The Eiffel Tower reopened after the one-day strike, but the political and reputational fallout has proved more durable. The image of women being asked to step aside at a monument celebrated worldwide as a symbol of liberty and openness proved particularly damaging, and it resonated strongly in a country that guards its secular identity closely.
Attention now turns to who will take over the management of the tower and what changes will follow. The company's commitments on equality training and internal procedures are likely to be tested in the coming months, as staff representatives and politicians press for concrete guarantees that a similar situation cannot arise again.
The episode illustrates how quickly an operational decision at a major cultural institution can become a national controversy. In France, where the separation of religion and state is treated as a foundational value, the sight of a religious group's customs being accommodated at the expense of female employees struck a particularly raw nerve.
For the tower itself, the challenge is to restore confidence among its workforce and the public. The monument draws millions of visitors each year and remains central to Paris's identity as a global tourist destination. Its operator must now demonstrate that the principles of equality it says it upholds are reflected in practice, not only in statements issued after a crisis.
SETE has not yet named a successor to Branco Ruivo, who will formally leave at the end of the year. The company said the transition would be handled in an orderly way, while insisting that the priority is to ensure the lessons of the internal review are fully implemented across the organisation.
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