France’s sports minister has warned against making the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris a scapegoat for people’s anger and frustration over social problems.
Amélie Oudéa-Castéra was speaking after rows over the high cost of tickets for the Games and suggestions that homeless people were to be moved out of the city to make room in budget hotels for sports fans and tourists.
“We shouldn’t make the Olympics the scapegoat of all our frustrations. It’s important not to distort the facts and blame the Olympic Games for all our social problems,” Oudéa-Castéra said on Wednesday. “I don’t want us to mix everything up. We do have major challenges over emergency shelter, but it’s not the Olympics’ fault,” she told France 2 television.
She said plans to move homeless people to regions outside Paris were started in April this year and denied this was linked to the Games.
“Today we have around 200,000 emergency places, a record since 2017, and we know there’s a very strong concentration in the Île-de-France … we have to deal with this and offer a better service. We cannot blame the Olympics for all the problems of society,” she said.
The housing minister, Olivier Klein, made a link between the Games and the problem of a shortage of emergency shelter for homeless people in the capital during a speech to parliament on 5 May.
He said budget hotels most often used for homeless people and asylum seekers intended to offer rooms at a premium during the Rugby World Cup in September and the Olympics next July. He said as many as 5,000 emergency accommodation beds could be lost.
The idea of creating new facilities around France paid for by the state to temporarily accommodate homeless people from Paris, many of whom are migrants, is already causing concern in some areas.
Agence France-Presse reported last week that the government had been asking local prefects since mid-March to create temporary reception centres in all but two French regions in order to free up hotel space in and around Paris.
Philippe Salmon, the mayor of Bruz, in north-west Brittany, voiced his opposition to plans for a new centre in his town of 18,000 people. “We are not in favour of installing such a holding centre in our municipality under conditions that we consider unworthy,” he told French media.
Eric Constantin, the head of the Abbé Pierre Foundation in Île-de-France, said he doubted this would achieve a lasting solution to the problem.
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He also cast doubt on the suggestion that the timing of the Olympic Games and the programme “to send migrants to the provinces” was a coincidence, suggesting the government might want to ensure there “are no more camps before millions of people arrive in France”.
Paris Olympics organisers have also faced fierce criticism over the cost of tickets. The opening ceremony, to be held along the River Seine, will cost between €90 to €2,700 to watch from one of the 100,000 places available on the lower quayside. Between 500,000 and 600,000 places on the upper quays are expected to be offered for free. Tickets for the closing ceremony at the Stade de France will cost between €45 and €1,600.
The president of the organisers, Tony Estanguet, said the aim was to make the event open to the “greatest number possible”, insisting that the 5.3% of tickets that cost €400-plus would help finance 4m tickets costing €50 or less.