The most important thing to understand about the location of the 2024 Olympic Games is that, for all intents and purposes, Paris was chosen as the host city by default. The French capital was one of five cities initially announced as candidate cities by the International Olympic Committee, or IOC. One by one, however, three of them dropped out: Rome due to financial concerns, Budapest and Hamburg because of public backlash to their bids.
That left only Paris and Los Angeles in the running when the IOC announced its decision in September 2017. Fearful of the emerging narrative that the burdens of hosting the Games outweigh the benefits, the IOC broke with precedent and declared the host cities for the next two Olympics at the same time—Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028.
IOC officials were right to be concerned. Over the past decade, stories about the ballooning budgets for the Olympics, often paid for by taxpayers, have become commonplace. So, too, have photos of the “white elephant” stadiums left behind and reports about the mistreatment of locals, particularly residents of low-income neighborhoods moved involuntarily to make room for development. Ahead of the most recent Summer Olympics in Tokyo, headline after headline reinforced the impression that hosting the Games is simply not worth it anymore, if it ever was.
The stakes are therefore high for the IOC heading into Paris 2024. Organizers promised that these Olympics will be different, a promise they continue to swear by just months before the start of the Games. According to them, Paris 2024 will end up costing much less than previous affairs and be paid for mostly by private financing. The Games will generate less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of recent Olympics. And no white elephants will be left behind, with the events taking place almost exclusively in existing infrastructure and temporary venues. If successful, Paris 2024 could reset the narrative about hosting duties.
But as high as the stakes are for the IOC, they are even higher for France—and specifically for President Emmanuel Macron. He has embraced the Games since day one—literally. He met with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo to discuss the city’s bid on his first day in office in 2017 and met with IOC officials two days later. He believes the Games can boost “national optimism,” as he called it, as well as France’s soft power ambitions.
But Macron had no way of knowing back then that France would find itself in a moment of enormous strategic opportunity come 2024. A confluence of events—namely Brexit, waning U.S. hegemony, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and fears of a second Donald Trump presidency—have left a leadership vacuum in Europe.
One of Macron’s primary foreign policy goals is ensuring that France fills that vacuum, including by taking the lead in pursuing European strategic autonomy. If Paris 2024 succeeds and is as “magical” as organizers say it will be, the Games will add symbolic weight to France’s leadership ambitions.
Perhaps more important than appealing to the rest of the world, Macron needs the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris to appeal to the people of France.
Complementary to that is cementing Paris’ claim to being the de facto capital of Europe, now that London finds itself outside the European Union due to Brexit. Perhaps more so than any other recent Olympics, Paris 2024 will serve as a celebration of the host city itself. Most notably, the Games’ opening ceremony is planned to take place on the River Seine, with national teams arriving on boats and hundreds of thousands of spectators lining the banks on either side. Temporary venues are also being built at famous landmarks around Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, the Place de la Concorde and the Palace of Versailles. It will be “France’s biggest ever show,” the head of the organizing committee said recently.
If all goes to plan, Paris 2024 could create a lasting image of the French capital as the central node of and gateway to Europe, at a time when the continent seeks to secure a place for itself in the emerging post-American, multipolar world.
The Games could also bolster another one of Macron’s ambitions: setting France up as the “bridge” between the Global North and South. In particular, Macron’s foreign policy has emphasized the green transition and reforming the international finance system as ways to promote development in the Global South. The rebooted model that Paris 2024 offers for hosting the Olympics represents a domestic version of that worldview, not only through its sustainability measures but also in the Games’ approach to development, which is focused less on high-profile megaprojects and more on infrastructure improvements and investments in lower-income suburbs.
But perhaps more important than appealing to the rest of the world, Macron needs Paris 2024 to appeal to the people of France. Macron and his foreign policy worldview continue to face a threat from France’s nationalist and Euroskeptic far right, which presents the EU not as a source of leverage, but rather as a limit to national sovereignty, and whose anti-immigrant policies would raise barriers between France and the Global South, rather than create connections between them. Macron’s work in positioning France as the leader of Europe and a bridge to the world would be undone if the far right were to gain power and push a more isolationist foreign policy like the ones that have contributed to the U.S. and U.K.’s waning power.
Making sure Paris 2024 is a “source of collective pride,” as a recent Le Monde editorial put it, would therefore serve multiple political purposes for Macron. But this is not a new tactic for him. He has long looked to sports as a unifying force and a source of national pride, including when France hosted the Women’s World Cup for soccer in 2019 and the Rugby World Cup last year. He also has a personal relationship with star French soccer player Kylian Mbappe, whom Macron has attempted to enlist to play for the French national team at the Olympics. Ahead of Paris 2024, Macron has said he expects France to finish in the top five of the medal count at the Games.
But if the goal is to appeal to French people, Paris 2024’s organizers and French officials are not doing a very good job so far, at least in the Paris area. Officials admittedly have a difficult balancing act to accomplish: They don’t want to make the Olympics seem like they will be too disruptive, which could lead to a local backlash, but they also need to warn residents about the disruptions that will occur.
Still, the mixed messaging so far has undoubtedly failed to strike that balance. French and city officials essentially didn’t acknowledge that Paris 2024 would be disruptive for Parisians at all until November, when France’s then-transport minister abruptly warned that transport in the city during the Games would be “hardcore,” specifically using the English word. Hidalgo, the mayor, then offhandedly said that transport in the region wouldn’t be ready in time, after which Valerie Pecresse—the head of the greater Paris region and Hidalgo’s arch-rival—stepped in to assure residents that transport would, in fact, be ready, while also encouraging everyone to work from home if possible. At the same time, Pecresse lamented that France is “going to welcome the world and we are the only country that is not happy about it.”
The mixed messaging has led to widespread concerns among residents of Paris, more than half of whom say they plan to leave town during the Games. A mid-November poll showed that the proportion of Parisians who thought hosting the Olympics was a “bad thing” had doubled to 44 percent in two years.
Still, it’s not necessarily Parisians that Macron needs to win over with Paris 2024—it’s the French public more broadly. On that, sentiment is more mixed. That same poll found that 65 percent of people in France believed hosting will be a “good thing,” but a more recent one showed that a majority of people in France don’t think the country will be ready to host in time.
In the end, though, how the French view Paris 2024 beforehand may not matter. For Macron’s goal to succeed, he simply needs the lasting impression of the Games to be a source of national pride. If Paris 2024 is indeed as “magical” and “revolutionary” as organizers have promised, the Olympics this year may come to symbolize a new era for the Olympic Games and boost Macron’s—and France’s—image in Europe and around the world. If Paris 2024 fails, any damage to France’s image will likely be short-lived. The same may not be true for Macron.
Jakob Cansler is WPR’s assistant editor and the author of the Cansler Culture newsletter.