PARIS – The French Alps were named as the 2030 Winter Games host by the International Olympic Committee on Wednesday, though with conditions attached and signoff required from whoever is the next prime minister of France.
French President Emmanuel Macron helped present the bid to IOC members and gave assurances that the new prime minister and government he intends to install after the Summer Games in Paris will underwrite all the organizational guarantees that must still be signed.
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IOC members accepted his guarantees and gave their approval in an 84-4 vote, with seven abstaining.
“We would like to thank you for your confidence and trust,” Macron said in a brief acceptance speech. “We will be there and we will respect our commitments.”
National governments in Olympic host countries need to formally underwrite financial and security promises that are essential to organize and run the Games.
But France currently only has a caretaker government after legislative elections this month failed to deliver a governing majority for any political bloc or party.
Still, French organizers of the 2030 project expressed no doubts that they'd secure the necessary guarantees from whichever political bloc eventually proves able to propose a prime minister for Macron's approval and form the next government.
“There is ... a political problem, a political situation,” said David Lappartient, the French Olympic Committee president who also is an IOC member.
“The president of the Republic himself, he has a lot of power, but not the one to sign financial guarantees,” Lappartient said. “He will instruct the new prime minister, when he will be known, to sign.”
The IOC set an Oct. 1 deadline for that. The National Assembly elected this month must then ratify that document by March 1, 2025, IOC President Thomas Bach said.
Because the legislative elections produced a hung parliament, Macron so far has been unable to appoint a new prime minister. He says the current caretaker administration will remain in place through the Paris Olympics that end Aug. 11.
But France's political uncertainty could last for weeks or even months after the Games if the new parliament's divided minority groupings fail to coalesce behind a prime ministerial candidate.
“It's quite difficult to find a majority to appoint a prime minister, but there is no doubt that there is a majority behind the Olympic Games," Lappartient said.
“So we have no doubt that this will be delivered.”
The caretaker sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, said she has never faced forceful opposition from parliamentarians to the French Alps' project.
“I never got any hostile questions on 2030,” she said.
The French bid was the only candidate — preferred by the IOC with exclusive negotiating rights since November — and is a project centered on ski resorts in the French Alps and ice sports venues in the coastal city Nice.
Barely 5 1/2 years ahead of the scheduled opening ceremony, the 2030 Winter Games has the shortest lead-in time to prepare for any modern Olympics.
Macron and bid officials acknowledged the challenges of climate change for snow sports and Winter Games hosting.
“We have now to invent a new model, a sustainable one, for people living in the mountains,” Macron said in a speech in English. "We do believe in the future of Winter Games. We do believe in the future of our mountains.”
The leader of one of the French Alps' regional governments acknowledged the difficult future.
“We are not skiing today as we used to ski in the past,” said Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region. “Climate change is a reality with an impact on the mountains.”
“We want to be optimistic but realistic,” Muselier said in translated comments, promising the greenest-ever Winter Games “on a human scale.”
France previously hosted the Winter Games three times: the inaugural 1924 edition in Chamonix, 1968 in Grenoble and 1992 in Albertville.
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games