Minister for sport must be one of the most unenviable jobs in France right now. At the weekend, Amelie Oudea-Castera plunged into the murky waters of the Seine in an effort to persuade competitors that it would be safe to take part in the triathlon and open-water swimming events in the fast-approaching Paris Olympics.
Despite a £1.1 billion clean-up operation, unsafe levels of E.coli were recently found in the river three weeks running, from late June and into July.
Ms Oudea-Castera, however, is looking on the bright side and has promised to keep swimming in the river throughout this week to show that all is well. The water is ‘depolluted, that’s for sure!’ she told French radio. Let’s hope, for the sake of her health, that she is right.
For the time being, Seine waters are — just — within safe levels, but little else in the French capital augurs well for the Games, due to start in just over a week.
A protester throws a projectile in front of a burning bicycle during clashes with police after the second round of the French parliamentary elections
Only ten days or so ago, hooded and masked protesters were running through the city’s streets, throwing flares, smashing property and burning electric bicycles.
Violence erupted following the second round of President Emmanuel Macron’s ill-judged — and ill-tempered — snap elections in which a coalition headed by hard-Left Jean-Luc Melenchon successfully stopped Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from winning a majority.
The street cleaners had barely finished clearing the smouldering ashes from the riots following the first round, which the hard-Right National Rally had won.
Tear gas was used to disperse the crowd and the historic Place de la Republique was left littered with piles of rubbish. Spent firework casings surrounded the bronze statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, who holds aloft an olive branch, the ancient gesture of peace.
Demonstrations on such a scale have not been seen in Paris for years. And with the Olympics looming, the timing couldn’t be worse.
A hundred years have passed since the city last hosted the Games and organisers — who have lavished a reported £8 billion on preparations — are predicting an influx of 15 million visitors, with eight million spectators’ tickets sold at the fastest rate in history.
Despite police efforts to bus thousands of homeless people out of the city and into towns around the country, there are still many of them on the streets of Paris
But for the 2.1 million who live here, discontent — and public negativity about the Olympics — is at an all-time high.
A recent opinion poll found that 52 per cent of Parisians were considering leaving the city for the summer, joining the mass exodus from what many have taken to calling ‘L’enfer’ or ‘Hell’.
Given the lawless scenes that have unfolded here recently, one can hardly blame them.
According to reports in French newspaper Le Monde, a combination of security fears, city-wide construction work and the looming risk of strikes — by unions including train drivers, nurses and police — has plunged Paris into chaos.
As one recent editorial put it, far from having caught Olympic fever, the city is on the verge of having an Olympic-sized breakdown.
Chief among residents’ concerns is the terror threat, currently registered as ‘high’, meaning the risk of attacks is ‘very likely’ during the Games. French intelligence agents have reportedly foiled a plot by would-be suicide bombers linked to an Afghanistan-based offshoot of Isis and ‘several’ arrests have been made.
In a city still scarred by the atrocities at the Bataclan concert hall in 2015, in which Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people, heavily armed police toting handguns and assault rifles have flooded the streets. The recent protests have only heightened locals’ fears.
During the opening ceremony on July 26, a Paris 2024 spokesperson says, there will be ‘45,000 state security personnel mobilised across central Paris’. The centre will be cordoned off by a ‘ring of steel’ throughout the Games, which residents will only be able to pass by scanning QR codes on their smartphones.
Everyone, without exception, will be subjected to rigorous anti-terror checks.
A man cycles through tear gas as protesters demonstrate against the French hard-Right at the Place de la Republique
With crowds swelling by the day, Paris is certainly vulnerable. But locals blame their controversial and outspoken mayoress, Anne Hidalgo, who has held the position since 2014, for making everyday life here even worse.
On social media, the hashtag #saccageparis, which translates as ‘trashed Paris’, has been trending, with commentators pointing out rubbish dumped in the streets, prolific drug use and profane graffiti — all under her watch.
Ms Hidalgo, a Spanish-born Socialist politician, is a divisive character whose wide-reaching ambitions have come roundly under fire. Traffic congestion is a particular bugbear.
‘I’ve done this job for 23 years and I’ve never seen the roads so busy,’ says Mouhssine Berrada, 55, a taxi driver and president of the city’s national taxi union. He admits that working during the Olympics will be a ‘challenge’ for his 2,000 drivers. ‘You can lose a lot of time trying to get from one place to another.’
To sour the mood further, locals have been urged not to move house or order deliveries for six weeks during the Games, in a bid to keep the roads clear.
They’re also being advised not to host parties during the opening ceremony, for fear the historic balconies on thousands of buildings lining the Seine might collapse.
As one resident wrote on social media: ‘How long is it before the police chief simply asks us Parisians to leave?’
Those who live here are all-too familiar with the city’s homelessness crisis, another issue on which Ms Hidalgo has been staunchly criticised — and which seems to be getting worse.
Almost half (44 per cent) of homeless people in France are found in Paris, with official estimates placing the total around 150,000, despite a campaign of ‘social cleansing’ which got under way here last year, with officials dismantling tents and shelters, forcibly rounding up rough sleepers and bussing them to towns outside the capital ahead of the Olympics.
Rather than solve the problem, activists say, officials are simply moving it out of sight to make Paris look good.
Parisians have been frustrated by increased traffic, construction works and heightened security in the lead up to the Olympics
In the past 13 months, more than 12,545 homeless people, refugees and sex workers have been ‘moved on’. In the Stalingrad area of the city, hordes still gather under the shelter of the metro tracks and along the Saint-Martin canal, with haphazard camps strewn with dirty mattresses, food containers and cardboard boxes.
Charlotte Kwantes, of the humanitarian charity Utopia 56, says Paris lacks the infrastructure to help and house them, particularly immigrants who have been granted asylum (and therefore lose their right to the state-funded accommodation offered during the asylum process).
‘They see them as undesirable, so they’re trying to hide them from public view,’ she adds.
‘If just 1 per cent of the Olympic budget was used to help them, instead of putting them back on the streets elsewhere, this would make a huge difference.’
Another group whom city officials tried to move on in the pre-Olympics scramble are the ‘bouquinistes’, who have sold second-hand books from their iconic green boxes on the banks of the Seine for more than 400 years.
Last summer, they were told they would have to shut down and relocate, apparently for security reasons.
Jerome Callais, 60, head of the booksellers’ union and a proud bouquiniste of 33 years, says the move put their heritage, and the livelihoods of his 450 colleagues, in danger. ‘I had nightmares and sleepless nights over it,’ he explains. ‘They treated us like nobodies, like we were street-workers.
‘But we are part of the soul of Paris. Shutting us down doesn’t look good — it was a farce.’
Thanks to a vigorous fightback, the decision was reversed in February, so Jerome can now stay open and benefit from tourist trade throughout the summer.
A protester waves the French flag at a demonstration following the results of the first round of the elections
But visitors to Paris in the coming months are in for a more expensive trip than usual.
Not only have flights and train fares shot up in price but hotel reservations for the period are now averaging £870 per night. Transport costs are also set to rise to £3.40 (from £1.80) for a single metro ticket from July 20 to September 8.
Ticket prices at the Louvre, currently hosting an exhibition on the origins of the Olympics, have increased by 30 per cent to £19, the first hike in seven years. And there’s yet another nasty surprise in store: the city’s ongoing problem with vermin.
Rats are a perennial plague in Paris, worsened by strikes among dustbin workers and ongoing sewer renovations, and this year there’s a new threat from mosquitoes carrying tropical diseases, which health authorities have deployed specialist teams to track.
The dreaded bedbug infestation, which saw swarms of parasitic insects take up residence in hotels, homes and public transport last year, is rearing its head again, too.
Sebastien Pizzocaro, director of Eco-Flair, an organisation which uses sniffer dogs to detect bedbugs, says that although contaminations are currently ‘very low’ he expects them to increase exponentially during the Olympics and Paralympics.
Demand for decontamination is ‘stronger than usual’, with requests for his services — which cost £25 per room — up by 20 per cent. Another cleanliness problem — which sports minister Ms Oudea-Castera is at pains to prove has come to an end — has centred on the Seine.
In May, water charity Surfrider found that heavy rain had caused Paris’ centuries-old sewage system to overflow, potentially into the areas where the triathlon and open-water events are scheduled to take place, near the historic Alexandre III bridge.
Cleaning the Seine has been one of the top priorities for Olympic organisers. A Paris 2024 spokesperson now insists that the ‘water quality in the Seine continues to improve every day’, adding that ‘almost 100 per cent of days are already swimmable during the Games period.’
And, in response to Parisians’ gripes, the spokesperson says a ‘high priority’ has been placed on consulting locals to allow them to plan around the disruption the Games are bound to bring.
A protester holds a flare as tensions erupt over the snap elections called by president Emmanuel Macron
‘Extraordinary measures are being implemented to ensure the security and smooth operation of events in the city centre, which we recognise will inevitably impact some aspects of residents’ daily lives over a short period.
‘The aim has been to keep such impacts to a strict minimum.’
For her part, the office of mayor Anne Hidalgo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Online, a ticking countdown clock scores off the days, hours and minutes until the Games begin. But when the feted celebrations kick off, bookseller Jerome Callais — like many, perhaps even most, Parisians — won’t be in attendance.
‘My colleagues and I feel excluded,’ he says. ‘I thought the Olympics were going to be like a big party for everyone.
‘Sadly, this isn’t a party I want to attend.’
Others, like one protester called Matthieu, have barely given a thought to the world’s biggest sporting event taking place in his home city — something which, in ordinary times, he admits he would enjoy.
He says: ‘By the time the Olympics start, Paris could be on its knees.’