Only 37 per cent of French looking forward to 2024 Olympics
Article by voxeurop

WORLD  15 April 2024 - 17:11

European voxeurop has published an article highlighting problems with the organisation of the Olympic Games in Paris. Caliber.Az reprints the article.

Only 37 per cent of French people say they are looking forward to the 2024 Olympics with “a lot” or “some eagerness”, according to a Viavoice poll published on 25 March. Paris - and other French cities, including Marseille - will be hosting the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics between 26 July and 8 September.

What explains this lack of enthusiasm?

It’s important to recall that the candidature of Paris was accepted in 2017 after the other cities in contention (Budapest, Boston, Rome) had withdrawn, in part due to the low support of the population following referendums or popular consultations. No consultation took place in the French capital. Sports sociologist Michel Koebel discusses this in a lecture. The consent of the population, as well as how it is measured - a poll? From what kind of sample? With which questions? - is a central issue, Andreas Rüttenauer reminds us in his analysis for the tageszeitung in view of Munich's candidature for 2036.

The French government's promise was to make Paris 2024 the “people’s Olympics and Paralympics”. How? There was talk of accessibility and affordability, given that the sports facilities already exist for the most part. Angélique Chrisafis recalls in the Guardian that the city already has 95 percent of the necessary facilities and does not have to build a stadium, as London did in 2021, and that Paris is already one of the world's top tourist destinations. In addition, the territory chosen for the Games is supposed to benefit from the event.

Seine-Saint-Denis

Most of the facilities dedicated to the Olympics are in fact located in the Seine-Saint-Denis département, the poorest in France (excluding “overseas” territories): 27.6 per cent of the population (1.6 million people) live below the poverty line, according to the latest Inequality Observatory Report.

Seine-Saint-Denis holds several unhappy records, explains Louise Couvelaire in Le Monde: there is less of everything (fewer teachers, magistrates, doctors, police officers); it is the youngest department (42 per cent of the population are under 30), and it has the highest crime rate and the lowest number of graduates. It is also, paradoxically, the most economically dynamic department, due to some of the biggest French companies having moved here (Veolia, Vinci, BNP Paribas, SFR, Charles de Gaulle airport...), even though the population does not get to enjoy much of this wealth. For example, 70 percent of the executives working in the department live elsewhere.

Angélique Chrisafis reminds us in the Guardian that two major works under construction, the Olympic Village and the Aquatic Centre, will remain in use for the department once the Olympics are over: part of the Village will be turned into social housing and part sold to private individuals. The problem? The extravagant price per square metre - 7,000 euro - in an area where the average cost is around 4,000, against the Parisian average of 10,000. The pools will be left to the department, which is structurally poor in swimming pools, and half of the children around 10 years old cannot swim.

Several initiatives have sprung up in defence of the green spaces of Seine-Saint-Denis, which have been totally or partially destroyed to make room for the Olympic facilities, including the workers' gardens of Aubervilliers. Journalist Jade Lindgaard, author of Paris 2024 , une ville face à la violence olympique (Divergences, 2024), reports in Arrêt sur Images.

The question of prices: tickets, accommodation, transport

The most telling example is the ticket prices for the athletics finals at the Stade de France: 85 euro for the cheapest and furthest away, 195 euro for mid-range tickets, and the rest between 385 and 690 euro, as Mathias Thépot reports in Mediapart: 'With few exceptions, holders of the cheapest tickets will only have access to the qualifying competitions - which are less interesting - and to seats that are often poorly located in stadiums or competitions far from Paris.

What about the cost of accommodation for spectators? Aurélie Lebelle reports in Le Parisien that the price of a double room in a hotel with breakfast has quadrupled on average. According to Sud-Ouest, the average price for a night in Airbnb accommodation is 619 euro.

Mathias Thépot explains that public transport in Paris was supposed to have been free - as declared by the president of the Games' organising committee, Tony Estanguet in 2021 - for ticket holders. This was the case in London in 2012. Now it appears that prices will in fact increase from 2.15 to 4 euro between 20 July and 8 September, as Damien Dole explains in Libération. The official justification for this increase is to cover a 15 percent increase in traffic.

That’s just capitalism, you might say.

“Social cleansing”

The most problematic and painful issue is that of population displacement, as Michael McDougall recalls in a Washington Post in an article from 2021 titled “The Olympics is a disaster for people who live in host cities, displacement and gentrification are the norm for preparing for the Games”.

In Paris, 80 associations and NGOs, united in the collective 'Le Revers de la médaille' (The Other Side of the Medal) denounce the displacements of populations considered “undesirable”: migrants, homeless people, sex workers. “The Olympics come and go. The experience of these mega sports events around the world leads to the same spectacle: systematic social cleansing,' reports L'Humanité.

At Mediapart, Faïza Zerouala explains that “The Schaeffer collective has calculated that more than 4,000 people from African countries have been displaced from squats and halls in Seine-Saint-Denis.” Libération reports on the mayor of Orléans who condemns the displacement of around “500 homeless people” from Paris in the last year.

In addition to all this, there are also students, some 2,000, who have been asked to leave their residences for the duration of the Games. This has led the office of the Defender of Rights, the French ombudsman, to open an investigation.

And then there are the roughly 300 families who inhabit the neighbourhoods destroyed to make room for the Olympic Village on the ile Saint-Denis. These families have been relocated, but often too far from their previous place of residence or work. Reuters also reports on the eviction of Roma from a building they had occupied in the Ile Saint-Denis.

Jules Boykoff, professor of political science at Pacific University (Oregon, USA), and author of “What Are the Olympics For” (Bristol University Press, 2024), explains to Mediapart: “The Olympics are a machine that amplifies inequalities. [...] There are some clear trends [...]. For the Seoul Games in 1988, more than 700,000 people were displaced. The same happened in Beijing in 2008, with more than 1 million people displaced”.

While there are many groups, associations and initiatives protesting these phenomena (Extinction Rebellion, Youth for Planet, Saccage 2024...), their voices are not being given widespread media attention, explains Sylvia Zappi in Le Monde.

And the costs?

The initial budget of 6.8 billion euro first rose to over 9 billion euro, before reaching 11 billion, according to the consultancy firm Asterès. Another related controversy is the remuneration of Tony Estanguet, president of the Committee: 270,000 euros per year, which has led the financial prosecutor's office to open an investigation. However, as Sylvain Bersinger, economist at Asterès tells us in La Tribune, the Games of 2024 “has had a limited  cost compared to previous Olympic Games”.

Private sponsors cover a large part of the budget. They include EDF, Orange, Accor, Carrefour, BPCE, Sanofi and LVMH. The luxury goods group of Bernard Arnault, “the richest man in the world”, has put up 150 million euro.

Caliber.Az