Site visit at the Élysée.
500 days before the official opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Emmanuel Macron summons, on Tuesday, all the organizers and partners, private and public, to take stock of the progress of the work.
“
The countdown to the Olympics comes at eye level
, explains a close friend of the Head of State.
The event is getting closer and the agenda will gradually take on the colors of the Olympic Games.
»
It therefore begins on Tuesday, at the Élysée, with first a lunch with the managers of the Games' partner companies to take stock of the financing.
A meeting also with the president of the organizing committee, Tony Estanguet.
Then an interview with the artistic director of the opening ceremony, Thomas Jolly.
Finally, a speech at the prefecture of Île-de-France and a meeting with some 500 officials from the region mobilized for the event.
The next day, the Head of State will organize a "file follow-up point" in the Council of Ministers to mobilize the executive.
Read alsoSecurity of the 2024 Olympics: the Ministry of the Interior will raise an extraordinary armada
“
He wants to ensure,
we say at the Élysée,
that everyone, within all the ministries as well as our administrations, is at work on a clear agenda and roadmap, on which the all possible pitfalls are known and anticipated
.”
There are many.
The first is security.
No room for error
As regards the organization of an event with planetary repercussions, France has no room for error.
Emmanuel Macron even less.
"
We are on an event that will place the country at the center of the world for two months
", sums up at the Elysée.
Last year's Champions League final fiasco at the Stade de France sounded a stark warning.
And shined the spotlight on the risks associated with the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, organized around the Seine, for the first time outside an enclosed stadium.
On July 26, 2024 at 8:24 p.m. sharp, a flotilla of more than a hundred boats loaded with delegations of athletes will set off on the Seine from the Pont d'Austerlitz to the Eiffel Tower, a six-kilometre journey. .
The challenge is immense.
This is not the only one.
Transport, housing, health, environment, employment, culture… “
There are a whole host of subjects which are in front of us
”, summarizes one in the entourage of the Head of State.
With a diplomatic aspect too, since the question of the participation of Russian athletes in the Olympics is still not settled.
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At the end of January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country was attacked by Russia, had asked Emmanuel Macron that Russian athletes be excluded from the Paris Olympics.
The Head of State has planned to speak on the subject "
around the summer
", when the IOC and the international federations will have spoken.
Political background
By devoting his day to the Olympic Games 500 days from the opening, Macron wants to ensure that beyond the security site or that of transport, all the other aspects of the organization are also under control.
It is about its ambition to “
carry out the most beautiful Games in history
”, a hundred years after their first edition in Paris.
"
The ambition is to make these Games an event that will make France shine, as did the great Universal Exhibitions of the 19th and 20th centuries
", we are assured around the Head of State.
Because if the event is sporting, it also has a political background.
For Emmanuel Macron, the Olympic Games fall in the middle of his second five-year term.
“
It will be the climax of his mandate
, summarizes a minister.
Then the war of succession will enter a more acute phase and he won't be able to do much.
»
Last opportunity for the president to stage himself in front of the whole world.
And to praise France again.
“
Since the first day of his first term, Emmanuel Macron has made the attractiveness of the country a central element of his action
, recalls an adviser.
Now is the time to show the world that we can create a precedent that remains engraved in the collective memory.
And so much the better if, past the inevitable doubts, quarrels and controversies, the morale of the country recovers.
This is also the issue.
Provided the organization succeeds.