The Olympic rings on the Place du Trocadéro with a view of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Photo: Michel Euler/AP
When government posters recently appeared in metro stations advising Parisians to work from home during this summer's Olympic Games to avoid crowded public transport, 24-year-old Julie, a refugee aid worker, was surprised.
"It feels a bit like Covid-19 lockdown all over again," she said. "It's like saying, 'Parisians, stay at home, stay away, while all this money is being spent on the Games.' Personally, I'll stay away. I don't like the idea of pushing homeless people out of the city center to make way for the Games."
As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, politicians, sports stars and the president, Emmanuel Macron, are trying to shore up public support for what is being billed as a 'revolutionary' and radically different kind of games - with half the usual carbon footprint . and very few buildings, to avoid wasteful infrastructure investments.
Many Parisians are excited - of the approximately 8 million tickets sold so far, French people bought more than 3 million, including 1.7 million bought by people from the Paris region - but others in the French capital want to flee the city to avoid the chaos , or their apartments at high prices. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, recently urged her residents: "Don't leave this summer. Don't leave, it would be idiocy. This is going to be incredible." Yannick Noah, the French tennis star and captain of the French Paralympic men's tennis team, said: "The moaning has to stop... The whole world will be here... It's going to be beautiful and I think there are a lot of people who don't. Realise that."
Macron has called the Olympics the "pride of the nation" as 300,000 people applied for 45,000 volunteer jobs at the Olympics. Paris bills itself as an Olympic Games 'for the people', with amateur athletes from the general public able to run the Olympic marathon route at night for the first time. The two main construction projects, the Olympic Village and the Olympic Aquatic Center, have both been completed and are intended to boost low-income areas in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of the capital.
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But with only a few months to go, challenges remain. The mammoth opening ceremony on the River Seine, which will see 10,000 athletes float on about 100 boats across six kilometers of water, watched by hundreds of thousands of spectators, remains an uphill battle. It is the first time that an opening ceremony of the Olympic Games will be held outside the main athletics stadium. The airspace will be closed and more than 45,000 police officers will be present. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told the Senate this week that security for the Games was the "biggest logistical and security challenge" his ministry had faced. In the run-up, 1 million anti-terrorism checks and investigations will take place.
Whether the Seine will be clean enough for swimming for triathlon and open water swimming events is another important question. Swimming has been banned in the Seine for the past century due to dangerous pollution levels. But a frantic clean-up operation has involved water management and filter stations in the hope of opening the river for the Olympics and beyond. Macron has promised to swim in it himself. Important tests for bacteria will be carried out in June. The main goal is to prevent too much waste from being washed into the river when it rains. Brazilian Olympic champion open water swimmer Ana Marcela Cunha told AFP this week that there had to be a plan B - to hold the swimming events elsewhere - if the water was not clean enough. She said: "It is not about erasing the history of the Seine. We know what the Alexandre III Bridge and the Eiffel Tower represent, but the health of athletes must come first."
In a tense political climate ahead of the European elections, with Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally in the lead, right-wing TV pundits continue to bicker over the Olympics. There are arguments about whether things are French and nationalistic enough, including speculation that Aya Nakamura, one of the most streamed French-language singers in the world, could sing Edith Piaf at the opening ceremony and the fact that the cross at the top of the Invalides building in Paris was not included in the Olympic Games posters. Meanwhile, public transport, which was supposed to be free in Paris' original Olympic bid, will instead double ticket prices during the Olympics.
Hotel prices have skyrocketed. Research by Le Parisien has shown that a hotel in the 15th arrondissement that cost €90 last summer will cost €1,363 during the Olympics. The initial increase in advertised hotel room rates, which averaged about three times higher than normal, is starting to decline slightly and stabilize.
The Paris Games are also under the most intense financial scrutiny of any Olympic Games, after organizers promised a transparent and ethical approach without the common problems of massive overspending and corruption. French financial prosecutors are investigating contracts for possible conflicts of interest and cronyism. The Paris 2024 organizing committee, already under scrutiny by state auditors and France's anti-corruption agency, said it was fully cooperating. Another study examines the way pay is structured for Tony Estanguet, the three-time Olympic canoeing champion and chief organizer of the Paris Olympics. Estanguet, who is paid less than Sebastian Coe when he was chief organizer for the 2012 London Olympics, has said he "does not decide his pay or its structure".
The government will hold urgent talks with unions next week over wages, working conditions and overtime to prevent possible strikes by public sector and transport workers during the Games. The police unions have already secured special bonuses for this period. When the government last month gave every primary school child in France a special €2 commemorative Olympic coin and booklet, some teachers' unions complained that the €16 million cost could have been better spent on schools.
Estanguet said: "It's a bit inevitable that such a big event will raise questions and concerns, and Paris is the same as previous host cities who also wondered at this stage how it would go... but basically the indicators are all the same. very reassuring. The Olympic Village was completed ahead of schedule. Six months before the Games we sold more than 8 million tickets... 400,000 people wanted to run the marathon, more than 100,000 registered to carry the flame while we only had 10,000 places. We really feel a sense of enthusiasm...Everything is going according to plan, and that is what is important."
The Olympic Games in numbers
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More than 16 million people are expected to visit the wider Paris region during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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300,000 people will attend the opening ceremony.
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15,000 athletes will participate.
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5,084 medals will be awarded.
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During the Olympic and Paralympic Games, 13 million meals will be served to athletes in the Olympic Village.
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Once the Games are over, more than 8,000 trees will be planted on the grounds of the Olympic Village and it will be transformed into a new residential, commercial and business district in Seine-Saint-Denis.
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There will be 4 billion TV viewers worldwide.