PARIS– Emmanuel Macron promised to make France shine during the Olympics. Weaker than ever at home following the recent elections, the French president hopes the Paris Games will also help his own star shine again.
The Olympics are the best way to convince the world to “choose France”, Macron said this week, presenting a slogan aimed at boost foreign investment in the country. “It will promote our landscapes, our facilities, also our savoir-faire, our gastronomy.”
Macron’s decision last month to call early legislative elections has plunged France into a political turmoil. The vote left the National Assembly, the influential lower house of parliament, with no dominant political bloc for the first time in modern France.
The French president said that the ministers of its centrist alliance would continue to manage the work of the government in a caretaker role, at least until the end of the Olympic Games, to avoid creating “disorder” when the world has its eyes on France.
On Thursday, Macron plans to have lunch with around 40 foreign CEOs from some of the world’s biggest companies, including Samsung, Tesla and Coca-Cola, with the aim of reassuring them about the political situation in France, his office said.
But that’s not what he wants to talk about when he welcomes more than 110 heads of state and government on Friday for the Olympics. grand opening ceremony.
The Élysée Palace said Macron will express “the ambition to showcase the whole of France, its natural and cultural heritage, its art de vivre and its first-class athletes, to an audience of more than 4 billion viewers, including more than a billion at opening. ceremony alone.”
Furthermore, Macron and the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, advocated a summit aimed at encouraging world leaders and international organizations to support sport-related initiatives in areas such as education, health, equality, inclusion and sustainable development.
The Sport for Sustainable Development summit would be held Thursday near the Louvre Museum and would include 50 heads of state and government.
Macron, who highlighted the sports he has played over the years – famous boxing as well as tennis – he said that hosting the Olympics “was just a dream” when he was first elected in May 2017. Just four months later, Paris won the Games.
Macron’s aides said he was personally involved in the preparations, spending hours in meetings and making nearly 70 trips across France to encourage local sports initiatives or cities to host Olympic competitions over the past seven years.
Launching the 200-day countdown to the Games, Macron urged French citizens to train for 30 minutes a day, posting a video on social media of him looking sweaty and in sportswear next to a punching bag.
He was also involved in the creation of opening ceremony along the River Seine – even if he refused to reveal details to maintain the “surprise”. He supported the idea because he wanted France to see that it was important to “dare to change the rules” of an event normally held in a stadium, one of Macron’s aides said.
The Elysee official spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with the French presidency’s usual practices.
Macron said the opening ceremony would showcase the values that France brought to the world, with a parade of athletes on boats passing near Bastille Square, where the French Revolution was born in 1789, to the Trocadero neighborhood, where the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration. of Human Rights in 1948.
Some political rivals have criticized Macron’s focus on the Games, seeing it as an attempt to divert voters’ attention and serve his own interests. Members of a left-wing coalition demanded the immediate right to form a government because they won the largest number of seats in the National Assembly.
“He wants an Olympic truce… but we are not tired at all, we are capable of doing two things at the same time, like watching the 400 meter hurdles final and forming a government,” said Marine Tondelier, general secretary of the Party Green.
Macron claims that the Paris Olympic Games aim to be the greenest Games ever, with an ambitious goal of halve your global carbon footprint compared to the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games.
This, in part, was linked to the use of existing or temporary sites rather than building new ones. Two new facilities built in the deprived northern suburbs of Paris were considered inevitable: the Olympic Village, to house athletes and, later, become housing and office spaceand the aquatic center.
Some environmental advocates say the Paris Games should have gone further in reducing emissions and found more ways to make sustainability a central experience for fans. Some also questioned the climate record of major sponsors.
“The reality is that the organization of the Olympic Games is leading to massive construction of our natural and urban spaces, sacrificing biodiversity and the well-being of local residents,” climate activist group Extinction Rebellion said in a statement.
A social justice group also planned protests and warned of the negative impact of the Games on the most marginalized people in the Paris region.
With projected spending of 8.9 billion euros ($9.6 billion), the Games are expected to cost considerably less than $15.4 billion from Tokyo about the 2021 Olympics, postponed by the pandemic.
When it comes to sport, Macron hopes that the French people will focus on the athletes’ achievements rather than political concerns.
“It’s a moment of shared fun that will do the country good. We will be excited and united again. The country needs this,” he said on Tuesday.
There remains one promise that Macron has not yet fulfilled: swimming in the Seine, which was clean for the Olympics.
He repeated this week that he will go, but probably after the Games – after all, Macron still has three years until the end of his term.
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