After the horse-trading to win the Games came the French infighting over how to host them.

Paris was not sure it wanted to risk another rebuff after losing its 2005 bid for the 2012 Games to a London bid that the French believed inferior. After the 2015 terror attacks on the French capital, Anne Hidalgo, elected Paris mayor in 2014, decided the city needed to act to rebound from the trauma.

Just after his election as president in 2017, Emmanuel Macron promoted France’s case to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Since 2005, France had built a national velodrome and a canoe-kayak venue near Paris.

“By missing the Games, we built all the facilities,” said a former elected official.

After Los Angeles agreed to go for the 2028 Games, France was awarded the 2024 Games in September 2017.

France would host a “sober” Games, using existing facilities and temporary arenas in postcard Paris: the Eiffel Tower, the Invalides, Place de la Concorde. After testing the water with a cautious toe, it added swimming in the Seine.

Hidalgo, a socialist, dredged up an old and unfulfilled promise by Gaullist Jacques Chirac, when he was mayor, that Parisians should be able to swim in their river.

On 17 July, 10 days before the Games, Hidalgo took a dip in front of a battery of cameras.

Behind the scenes, the waters were sometimes murky as the national government, local elected officials and the organising committee bickered.

“Deep down, we are pains in the ass,” said one former local elected official to describe the relationship with the organising committee.

Paris organisers have made much of the planned legacy. A major beneficiary was to be the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, to the north of Paris, home of the main stadium and the Olympic village.

But the high price of tickets and elevated security mean the residents have difficulty feeling included in the mega-sports festival on their doorstep.

Saint-Denis has gained a swimming pool but the department was deprived of several promised events. When shooting was moved in 2022 to Chateauroux in central France, to the fury of local officials, the early stages of the boxing was switched to suburban Villepinte to compensate.

Hidalgo sent ripples through the organising committee in 2019 when she vetoed France’s oil and energy titan, TotalEnergies, as a sponsor.

The organising committee did not plug its last big sponsorship hole until July 2023, when, after months of negotiations and “messages” from the Élysée Palace, French luxury goods behemoth LVMH signed.

“There are some bluffs in this kind of negotiation,” said Antoine Arnault, son of company owner Bernard Arnault. “We wanted to get our money’s worth.”

There were also culture clashes between French bureaucracy and the glitz and hype of anglophone international sports administrators and marketers.

The head of the organising committee, Tony Estanguet, a French triple Olympic champion, straddled the cultures by talking of an Olympics that will “break the codes”.

There was friction with the police when the organising committee and Paris decided to hold the opening ceremony on the Seine, breaking the tradition of the Games beginning in the main stadium.

Originally planned as a people’s party along the banks, the police have had their way and most spectators will sit in allocated seats in fenced-off areas.

The budget has led to time-honoured problems as it has ballooned. Paris has been hit by inflation as well as the Covid pandemic and the knock-on effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The IOC, which is struggling to attract potential hosts, agreed to lower standards.

“The instructions to the IOC are to help Paris. The Olympics must be a success,” said one Olympic source.

Even so, in December 2022, the organising committee increased its predicted operating budget by €400 million, more than 10%. With infrastructure, the bill is close to €9  billion, two billion more than the 2019 estimate. That still makes Paris one of the cheaper recent Summer Games.

The organising committee has suffered a few bumps along the way. It was raided on suspicion of a conflict of interest, in particular in awarding “consulting contracts”, and Estanguet’s salary package has been subject to investigations by the national financial prosecutor’s office.

There was a race to complete all the work, with finishing touches still being applied days before the start. Nicolas Ferrand, in charge of the construction of the athletes’ village, said he was in a “cold sweat” after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, fearing shortages of materials.

Whatever happens, “two weeks before every­one will say that ‘it’s a disaster’ and in fact it’s not,” said a close friend of mayor Hidalgo. — AFP

On Monday, Britain announced a public consultation on its future energy supplies, raising the spectre of a return to nuclear power, and France stressed the need for nuclear energy as part of future EU policy during representations in Brussels.

Fossil fuels are estimated at present to provide about 80% of the world’s energy, but production of gas and oil could reach its maximum in the next three decades, experts say.

Jean-Marie Chevallier, a director of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and professor at France’s Paris-Dauphine university, sees the debate about nuclear power as ”logical” in the current environment.

Europe’s dependence on foreign gas has come under the spotlight in recent weeks following a stand-off between Russia and Ukraine at the start of the year, which saw supplies temporarily reduced to some EU countries.

Furthermore, environmental concerns and the perceived inadequacy of renewable energy to replace fossil fuels have pushed nuclear power back up the agenda.

Nuclear energy appears to be ”a partial solution,” said Chevallier, who stressed that only three European countries had recently decided to build new nuclear power stations — France, Finland and Romania.

”Among the countries that one feels are beginning to think about about nuclear power in Europe are Britain, Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands, which just extended the life of a nuclear power station by 20 years,” he added.

European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia recently said that it would be ”suicidal” for European government to eschew nuclear power.

And French Finance Minister Breton laid out the French government’s vision of future energy policy in the EU on Monday.

European energy policy should take into account ”the increasingly tense situation worldwide between oil and natural gas supply and demand [and] climate change,” he said.

He added: ”Maintaining the current contribution of nuclear power to the European energy mix and preserving Europe’s technological and industrial edge in this field are issues of strategic importance for the Union.”

France, a leading exporter of electricity in the EU, derives nearly all of its electricity from nuclear power.

Debate about nuclear power in Germany, where opposition is more entrenched, is also re-emerging.

Chevallier also stressed that fears about climate change and recognition of the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions were further arguments in favour of nuclear power.

”Finland, a democratic country and very concerned by environmental problems, has chosen to build a nuclear power station rather than using Russian gas,” he said.

In the United States, where the nuclear issue is not a hot topic of public debate, authorities are nonetheless keen to acquire a third-generation European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR), being developed jointly by French nuclear group Areva and Germany’s Siemens.

In Japan energy giant Toshiba on Tuesday said it had been named the preferred bidder for US nuclear power plant maker Westinghouse, beating out stiff competition from General Electric.

Westinghouse has built 49 of the nuclear reactors now in service in the United States with 35 constructed by General Electric. The bid by Toshiba comes as Japan is anxious to re-launch its nuclear energy program.

Chinese authorities have meanwhile undertaken a nearly $50-billion effort to build 40 reactors by 2020.

And in France, where 80% of electricity production is nuclear-driven, President Jacques Chirac earlier this month announced plans to develop a prototype fourth generation reactor that would become operational in 2020. – AFP