Olympics
The morning after! France’s ‘beautiful dream’ fades as Paris 2024 gives way to political crisis
The Paris Olympics delivered a dazzling summertime success that charmed the world and reaffirmed French national pride. The hangover will be tough.
With Sunday’s closing ceremony drawing a line under the sporting spectacle, President Emmanuel Macron must now deal with a self-created political crisis that he swept under the carpet until the Games were over.
Talks over government jobs and budget cuts loom – with voter anger sure to follow.
“Now we have to wake up from this beautiful dream,” said Christine Frant, 64, at the Club France fan zone last weekend. “Such a shame we’re going to return to our day-to-day routine, with no government, squabbles in parliament, while here it was all about joy, sharing.”
Macron seemed to cast the entire fate of the Olympics into doubt when he called a snap legislative election just weeks before the Games were due to begin. Voters delivered a hung parliament.
Choosing a prime minister who can appease Macron’s centrist camp, a leftist alliance and the far-right National Rally has proven tricky.
After days of political dealmaking that went nowhere after the July 7 vote, Macron declared a political truce for the duration of the Games, giving himself until around mid-August to name a prime minister and let political parties negotiate.
The mysterious sabotage on railway and telecoms targets at the start of the Games seemed like an ominous portent, but after that, the event carried on with no further security scares.
Macron decamped to his presidential retreat on the French Riviera, with a few incursions into Paris, including for a long hug with French judo titan Teddy Riner after he clinched his fourth career gold.
While many in France followed the tribulations of the Lebruns, two ping-pong-playing brothers, or cheered on star swimmer Leon Marchand, French politicians have been plotting a way out of the crisis.
Now, Macron will need to make a decision.
DECISION TIME
He has ignored the candidate painstakingly agreed on by the left-wing alliance, the New Popular Front, which came on top in the elections but has so far made no overtures to other parties to garner a majority.
Despite efforts to bolster her profile with media interviews, the chosen candidate Lucie Castets remains a political unknown.
“Who is she?” said Zahera Dakkar, 40, after watching the volleyball final at Club France. “I haven’t followed politics for two weeks. The Games were an escape from all that.”
Castets’ hopes of the left taking Matignon, the prime minister’s official residence, appear slim. Macron believes the vote delivered a National Assembly whose “centre of gravity is in the centre or the centre-right,” a source close to him said.
“We need a personality capable of talking to the centre, the right and the left. From the socially-minded right to the left that care about law-and-order,” said the source, who declined to be named to discuss the president’s thinking.
Macron’s eventual pick cannot appear to be a flunky, the source added, with an oppositional figure needed to give the government a “flavour of cohabitation”.
Xavier Bertrand, a former conservative minister under ex-President Jacques Chirac who has had tough words against Macron but has collaborated constructively with his government in his northern region fiefdom, could be compatible, the source said.
Bernard Cazeneuve, a former prime minister under Socialist President Francois Hollande, who was in office at the time of the 2015 Islamist attacks in Paris, could also work, the source said. Both men’s offices did not return a request for comment.
BUDGET CHALLENGE
Whoever Macron names will face a tough job, with the parliamentary approval of the 2025 budget top of the in-tray at a time when France is under pressure from the European Commission and bond markets to reduce its deficit.
“If Macron tries to name a sort of rightist government, he will get no budget,” said Eric Coquerel, the leftist head of the finance committee in parliament.
Macron’s entourage is keen to use the Games, organised by a centrist president, a Socialist mayor and a conservative regional leader, as an example of what France can do when different sides come together.
His rivals want to make sure the president gets no credit, Senator Laure Darcos told Reuters.
Even if Macron’s domestic fortunes remain bleak, the Games have bolstered his international standing.
Michael Payne, a former IOC marketing chief, said the president is seen from abroad as “the leader who delivered,” but he believed Macron had made a major strategic mistake by calling the snap election before the Olympics rather than after.
At Club France, where families stood in line to take selfies with the Olympic torch or snapped up fluffy red mascots, it was hard to find anyone who wanted to talk politics.
“Please, no!” said Frant, a French flag around her neck.
-Reuters
Paris 2024 sold a record 12 million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, beating the Games record previously set by London 2012, organisers said on Sunday.
Some 9.5 million tickets were sold for the Olympics and 2.5 million for the Paralympics, which end on Sunday.
In 2012, London organisers set the record for the Paralympics with 2.7 million tickets sold but only 8.2 million were sold for the Olympics.
-Reuters
The French capital will pay tribute to Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, who was set on fire by her boyfriend, by naming a sports facility in her honour, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday.
The marathon runner, who competed in the Paris Games last month died on Thursday, four days after she was doused in petrol and ignited by her boyfriend in Kenya, in the latest attack on a female athlete in the country.
The 33-year-old, who finished 44th in her Olympic Games debut, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in Sunday’s attack, Kenyan and Ugandan media reported.
“She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom, and it was in all likelihood her beauty, strength and freedom which were intolerable for the person who committed this murder,” Hidalgo told reporters.
“Paris will not forget her. We’ll dedicate a sports venue to her so that her memory and her story remains among us and helps carry the message of equality, which is a message carried by the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Cheptegei is the third prominent sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This is a critical moment— not just to mourn the loss of a remarkable Olympian, but to commit ourselves to creating a society that respects and protects the dignity of every individual,” Uganda’s Athletes commission Chair Ganzi Semu Mugula said on Friday.
-Reuters
Engineer’s descendants say French capital landmark ‘not intended as advertising platform’
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
The five rings – 29m (95ft) wide, 15m high and weighing 30 tonnes – were installed on the Eiffel Tower before the Paris Olympics opened on 26 July, and were expected to be taken down after the Paralympics’ closing ceremony on 8 September.
But Ms Hidalgo said she wanted to keep the interlaced rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red, symbolising the five continents.
She added that the current rings – each one measuring 9m in diameter – were too heavy and would be replaced by a lighter version at some point.
The Socialist mayor also claimed that “the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the Games, and she wanted “this festive spirit to remain”.
Some Parisians as well as visitors to the French capital supported the mayor.
“The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful, the rings add colour. It’s very nice to see it like this,” a young woman, who identified herself as Solène, told the France Bleu website.
But Manon, a local resident, said this was “a really bad idea”.
“It’s a historic monument, why defile it with rings? It was good for the Olympics but now it’s over, we can move on, maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before,” he told France Bleu.
Social media user Christophe Robin said Ms Hidalgo should have consulted Parisians before going ahead with her plan.
In a post on X, he reminded that the Eiffel Tower featured a Citroën advert in 1925-36.
The Eiffel Tower was built in1889 for the World’s Fair. The wrought-iron lattice tower was initially heavily criticised by Parisian artists and intellectuals – but is now seen by many as the symbol of the “City of Light”.
Ms Hidalgo, who has been running Paris since 2014, is known for her bold – and sometimes controversial – reforms.
Under her tenure, many city streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised.
Last year, she won convincingly a city referendum to ban rental electric scooters. However, fewer than 8% of those eligible turned out to vote.
But both drivers’ groups and opposition figures attacked the scheme, saying the SUV classification was misleading as many family-size cars would be affected.
France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu said at the time that the surcharge amounted to “punitive environmentalism”.
And just before the Paris Olympics, Ms Hidalgo and other officials went into the Seine to prove the river was safe to swim.
-BBC
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