Immediately after the fire, President Macron promised that Notre-Dame would be restored, and called for the work to be completed within five years.An international architectural competition was also announced to redesign the flèche and roof. The hasty flèche competition announcement drew immediate criticism in the international press from heritage academics and professionals who faulted the French government for being too narrowly focused on quickly building a new flèche, and neglecting to frame its response more holistically as an inclusive social process encompassing the whole building and its long-term users.A new law was immediately drafted to make Notre-Dame exempt from existing heritage laws and procedures, which prompted an open letter to Macron signed by over 1,170 heritage experts urging respect for existing regulations. The law, which passed on 11 May 2019, was hotly debated in the French National Assembly, with opponents accusing Macron’s administration of using Notre-Dame self-servingly for political grandstanding, and defenders arguing the need for expediency and tax breaks to encourage philanthropic giving.
Macron suggested he was open to a “contemporary architectural gesture”. Even before the competition rules were announced, architects around the world offered suggestions: the proposals included a 100-metre (330 ft) flèche made of carbon fibre, covered with gold leaf; a roof built of stained glass; a greenhouse; a garden with trees, open to the sky; and a column of light pointed upwards. A poll published in the French newspaper Le Figaro on 8 May 2019 showed that 55% of French respondents wanted a flèche identical to the original. French culture minister Franck Riester promised that the restoration “will not be hasty.” On 29 July 2019, the French National Assembly enacted a law requiring that the restoration must “preserve the historic, artistic and architectural interest of the monument.”
In October 2019, the French government announced that the first stage of reconstruction, the stabilising of the structure against collapse, would last until the end of 2020. In December 2019, Monseigneur Patrick Chauvet, the rector of the cathedral, said there was still a 50% chance that Notre-Dame cannot be saved due to the risk of the remaining scaffolding falling onto the three damaged vaults. Reconstruction could not begin before early 2021. President Macron announced that he hoped the reconstructed Cathedral could be finished by spring 2024, in time for the opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics.