In Paris, everything went wrong

France wants to hold an exemplary Olympics - sometimes against the will of the French themselves

There are less than a week left before the Olympic Games in France, and Paris is preparing to receive guests in a hurry. The Olympiad is an important project for the image of French President Emmanuel Macron. The authorities are trying to hold an exemplary Olympics, but not everything goes according to plan-in many ways because of the residents of the city who are not ready to make concessions. "Cold" tells what difficulties the authorities faced and how they tried to overcome them.

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Season of public bathing

On July 17, the mayor of Paris Ann Idalgo arranged a public swim in the Seine. For 10 minutes she swam in the river to prove to Parisians and guests of the French capital that the authorities managed to make a river suitable in order to hold competitions in it.

The hay is not clean: officially swimming in it is prohibited since 1923 due to the high content of E. coli in the water. The level of pollution is considered to be safe up to 1000 CC (unit of measurement of the number of viable microbial cells per 100 milliliters of liquid). According to the observations of the independent organization Fluidion, on July 18, the level of E. coli in the Seine was 1479. And this is still not bad: in early May, after heavy rains, this value rose above 20 thousand.

Over the past three weeks, the water test in the Seine has only shown three times that you can swim in it.

It's all about waste. During the rain, the feces from the sewer fall into the river. The situation with sewage was supposed to fix the large -scale project to clean the river, on which the city spent 1.4 billion euros. In Paris, two disinfection settings were built on treatment facilities. But the main part of the project is the new Austerlitz reservoir, which cost the budget of 90 million euros.

Local residents are still skeptical of the project cleaning project. A year ago, the inhabitants of Paris said that in the river “strange things are swimming”. “I will not swim either now or in two or three years,” one of them said in an interview.

A few days before the public bathing of Idalgo, the Minister of Sports of France Ameli Udea-Caster entered the same action. But she seemed to be unable to convince Parisians either: they joked on the Web that the only thing her wetsuit was missing was masks. In the comments under the post of Minister of Sports about the swim, the most faded comment - “User of Diariya: prints ...”.
The mayor of Paris Ann Idalgo, like French President Emmanuel Macron, promised to arrange his swim on June 23. Then the Parisians, dissatisfied, that in their opinion, they pointed out a lot of money to clean the river, decided to arrange a protest and brought to the tops of social networks, the haschiedanslanele23Juin hashtag, which translates as “I am Nasru in Senu June 23”.

City of protests

Paris is often striking, and in front of the Olympics in the city there was a threat of a strike of garbage collectors. Dissatisfied with the fact that the police will receive bonuses for work at the games, but they are not, in the union of garbage collectors threatened not to go to work during the Olympics, if they did not raise their salary. The city hall made concessions and was able to agree with the striking. And on July 22, just a few days before the start of the games, workers of Paris airports began to threaten a strike - despite the fact that a week ago the issue of surcharges was settled . The Force Ouvrière trade union requires more money, and if they are not given, then the airport employees will refuse to work on the opening day of the games.

Another conflict of citizens and authorities occurred due to the legendary Bukinistic alley on the shore of the Seine. Due to the opening ceremony and competitions in open water, the authorities tried to move the shops of books to the time of the games.

“We are the main symbol of Paris, we are here for 450 years. The desire to erase us from the face of the earth, when the celebration of these games should be a celebration of Paris, it seems madness, ” said the representative of the Association of Book Motorgists Jerome Calle. Since 2018, the Bukinists of Paris have been trying to obtain UNESCO cultural heritage status. The shores themselves have the hay of cultural heritage since 1991.

“Book traders in Paris are like gondoliers in Venice. It is impossible to imagine the city without us, ”Calle told Calle in another interview. After more than 100 thousand people subscribed under the petition to preserve small shops, Macron revoked the decision.

"France is not Qatar"

During theWorld Cup in Qatar in 2022, human rights activists reported that thousands of migrants could die at the construction sites of sports facilities due to improper working conditions. Then France promised that the construction of Olympic facilities will be different from them - in compliance with safety precautions and without involving labor of illegal migrants.

Nevertheless, it seems that the construction of objects did not come out completely “safe”. In May, The New York Times published a report that some objects still use the work of illegal migrants. Journalists were interested in that government data show less than 200 injuries at the Olympic Games facilities for four years of construction work and not a single death.

Journalists found that the deaths of workers were not included in statistics. “This allows them to say that France is not Qatar,” said Simon Picu, a representative of the State Labor Inspectorate of the State Labor Inspectorate. In an interview with American journalists, illegal workers said that the employer encouraged them not to report injuries and not to contact doctors.

To the exit

The city authorities approached the problem of the homeless rather radically. The Olympic village was built in one of the poorest areas of Greater Paris (as Paris is called with the suburbs), and the police evicted five thousand people from tents, abandoned buildings and other shelters.

After arriving in new cities, homeless people live in shelters for up to three weeks and undergo a check for the presence of the right to asylum. If the audit has been successfully completed, then they can be issued for long -term housing for the deadline for consideration of the application for asylum; If not, then they may be on the street or they are deported to their homeland if they are immigrants. According to NYT, 60% of the resettled do not receive long -term housing.

Students were also under attack from the Olympics. Near the Olympic village there are many student dormitories, in which the city authorities decided to populate personnel working at the Olympic facilities. Because of this, about three thousand students were supposed to evict two months ahead of schedule-not on August 31, but on June 30.

In return, students were offered 100 euros compensation and two tickets for Olympic competitions. This caused indignation. At the end of August 2023, the Paris administration ruled that the eviction of students was illegal, but this decision lasted only a few months, and in December the students were again forced to prepare for eviction. According to the latest data , 978 students moved to other dormitories for the summer, and two thousand more decided to completely leave them for the summer, disagreing with the proposed conditions. The youth organization FAGE said that "it was a very disturbing period for these students, especially during exams."