Editorial: Enthusiasm for Paris 2024 has yet to ignite, but Emmanuel Macron needs a successful Games to revive his flagging presidency
Workers hang the Olympic rings symbol on the Eiffel Tower. ‘Mr Macron is in dire need of a collective feelgood moment’.Workers hang the Olympic rings symbol on the Eiffel Tower. ‘Mr Macron is in dire need of a collective feelgood moment’.Enthusiasm for Paris 2024 has yet to ignite, but Emmanuel Macron needs a successful Games to revive his flagging presidency
mmanuel Macron has sometimes been criticised over a tendency to hector and lecture his fellow citizens, when a demonstration of empathy might have worked better. It was not, for example, a good look when, in 2018, the French presidentIn the lead-up to the Paris Olympics – now less than 50 days away – Mr Macron has again been adopting a dubious tough love strategy, this time in relation to France’s athletes.
Just “healthy pressure”, according to the president. But the rhetoric may be a sign that it is Mr Macron who is feeling the tension most. All host countries hope that an Olympics can inspire a national sense of unity and pride, while generating admiring applause from the world at large.
So far, the portents are mixed. Tickets are sold out, but evidence of wider enthusiasm is limited. There was a needless row over– now abandoned – to remove traditional bookseller stalls from the banks of the Seine for the Games’ duration. Parisians have loudly complained about the prospect of numerous no-go areas for traffic, in what is likely to be a chronically overcrowded city. Reassurances from ministers that the €10bn event will more than pay for itself have been treated with scepticism.
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