To analyse. Everyone has their own priorities. For Anne Hidalgo, the Olympic Games (OG) now come first. Even before the Council of Paris, these three or four crucial days when, every month and a half, the elected officials decide on the big and the small files which agitate the capital. During the last meeting of the Council, at the beginning of June, the socialist mayor was absent for a whole day to take part, in Madrid, in a meeting of the Olympic authorities on the fate of refugee athletes. It was the first time in twenty-seven years that the chief magistrate of Paris did not preside over the very sensitive session of topical questions. In such circumstances, others would have sent their sports assistant to Madrid. Anne Hidalgo, she insisted on going in person to Spain, even if it meant being accused by the right of deserting Paris.
The message is clear. Since her re-election in June 2020, Anne Hidalgo had focused on the Covid-19, then on her presidential campaign. For the rest of her mandate, she is betting above all on the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the summer of 2024. A sporting and commercial event that she had initially refused, before fighting for it to take place in Paris, and which she now sees as the peak of her second term. The trace she will leave in history, perhaps.
If the Games are the expected success, Anne Hidalgo can expect significant political benefit. Like Boris Johnson, who rode the 2012 Olympic wave in his home town of London and became Britain’s most popular politician before becoming prime minister seven years later. Enough to light a light at the end of the tunnel where Anne Hidalgo has been groping since her presidential fiasco: only 1.7% of French voters trusted her in the first round, barely 2.2% of Parisian voters. His image in public opinion has fallen into unprecedented depths.
Games first? Despite the British example, the strategy adopted by the mayor of Paris seems audacious. The most obvious risk is that a security issue could tarnish these much-desired games, like the scenes of chaos around the Stade de France which, on May 28, transformed the final of the Champions League football into resounding failure. Given this precedent, is France in a position to ensure the security of the future Olympic Games, the biggest event ever organized in the country? Nothing guaranteed, especially with the extraordinary opening ceremony planned not in a closed stadium but on the Seine and around, along a 6 kilometer route. The objective is to welcome, on that day, “ten times more audience than usual”. The mayor of Paris has little control over security issues, an area where the state is on the front line. Any failure can nevertheless sully his coat of arms.
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