OJ 2024: government will request communities to finance a budget increase

Due to inflation, the Solido budget, responsible for the delivery of Olympic works, will increase and the public contribution will drop from 1.38 to 1.55 billion euros. The government offers communities to finance two thirds of this increase.

Le Monde with AFP

The organizers of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris and the public authorities, President of the Republic in mind, has been repeating for months that the budget of the event will be held and that there will be no drift .

The engagement is worth both for Solido, the public company responsible for finance, supervise and deliver the necessary works, and for the Olympic Own Committee, with regard to the course of the event.

The inflation of the last months, linked in particular to the energy crisis aroused by the war in Ukraine, however modifies the situation. This subject will be on the menu of the Olympic and Paralympic Council to be held at the Elysée Thursday, September 29.

On this occasion, Emmanuel Macron will bring together the main ministers and local elected officials concerned by the Olympic Games, including the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and the president of the Ile-de-France region Valérie Pécresse, who had deplored not to be invited to a previous meeting in July.

Upstream of this meeting, the Elysée said that the off-inflation budget is “held”. But given the projections of the evolution of the price index until 2024, it is an additional cost of “150 million euros” until the Olympic Games that the budget of the solido will have to integrate, said the Presidency of the Republic.

This amount starts from “rather pessimistic projections” in order “to have no unpleasant surprises” for the next two years, we advance in the entourage of the president.

To cope with this increase, the government will offer communities to finance two thirds, said the Presidency of the Republic.

In July 2021, the Solido had already revised its budget up – today from 4 billion euros -, bringing the public contribution from 1.38 billion to 1.55 billion euros.

Now, the State provides approximately 1.8 billion euros in public spending, wherever they come from, for the Olympic project.

/Media reports.