The Paris Olympics could bridge France's political divisions or widen them

August 29, 2024

PARIS — This city can be breathtaking, from the dead of winter to the swelter of summer and everything in between. In unseasonably pleasant weather, it promises to shine Friday night. The Seine at sundown is spine-tingling with a glass of wine, a water-facing chair and a friend, let alone with 300,000 spectators lining the banks and rafts of waving Olympic athletes wafting over the water.

The Olympics can be about a host city and country seizing a moment, and that’s both athletically and culturally. Rise up and show off, France. When the cauldron is lit during Friday’s Opening Ceremonies in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, there should be a distraction — a memorable, photo-worthy distraction — from whatever daily worries Parisians carry around in their bicycle baskets.

Yet the Paris Summer Games arrive at a particular — and peculiar — point in French history. The government of President Emmanuel Macron is in shambles after elections this month left a once-popular leader without a majority of supporters in the General Assembly. The Games will be overseen by a country with only a caretaker government. There is no prime minister. The French confidence — not infrequently viewed as arrogance — is shaken.

“Things are kind of stuck, which honestly, it’s very un-French,” said Matthias Matthijs, a professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins’s School for Advanced International Studies. “… It’s very hard to see a way out of this. France looked like this very stable, progressive place — especially under Macron. They’ve lost that.”

The instability won’t come across as NBC broadcasts these unprecedented Opening Ceremonies on Friday night, opulence against a backdrop that can’t be created anywhere else. It feels fitting. Matthjis said he jokes with his students that there are two countries remaining, globally, who see themselves as an example for the rest of the world: the United States and France. Stop snickering. It has been that way for generations.

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“They both think they’re exceptional,” Matthjis said. “They’re exceptional in their government institutions and their ideas. The French generally think they have it figured out when it comes to work-life balance, when it comes to making time for family, holidays, meals, sustainability, agriculture.”

Or, as British academic Sudhir Hazareesingh wrote nearly a decade ago: “All great nations think of themselves as exceptional. France’s distinctiveness in this regard lies in its enduring belief in its own moral and intellectual prowess.”

So get ready, at least viscerally, to become Francophiles. There is much that the Opening Ceremonies, and the Games themselves, can highlight about the host country that will resonate globally — France’s history, its culture, its ideas, its food and fashion, not to mention its strong beliefs in equality, liberty and diversity. But even as Macron vowed this week that the status of his government — not just without a prime minister but without a schedule for the assembly to elect one — wouldn’t detract from the Games, it hovers over everything domestically.

On Wednesday morning here, the International Olympic Committee bestowed upon France the 2030 Winter Games — albeit while adding language to the agreement that puts a burden on France to prove the Alpine villages will be capable of hosting the competitions.

Macron, speaking at the IOC meeting, spoke confidently. It is his only way.

“I confirm the full commitment of the French nation and assure you that I will ask the next prime minister to include not only this guarantee but also an Olympic law in the priorities of the new government,” Macron said, failing to note that there is no way to know how that new government will be formed and which party — or coalition of parties, left or right — will hold power. “… Seven years ago, we made the same commitment, and we delivered. And we will do the same.”

Such statements feed right into the frustration some French citizens have with Macron: that he views himself as a quasi-king rather than the leader of a democracy. His detractors — and they are legion — pounced.

“The president lives in a parallel world,” wrote Olivier Faure, first secretary of the socialist party and president of the New Left group in the National Assembly, on social media, translated from French. “Reality escapes him: he still has not realized, after two elections, that he is now an arch-minority, disqualified by the French, and that he no longer has the possibility of acting as if he were Jupiter.”

Let’s start the Games, please. Despite the political crisis, Parisians seem ready to move forward to the Olympics — and even beyond. The only traffic Monday afternoon along Cours de la Reine were a half-dozen police motorcycles, roaring out of a tunnel past the fences that guard the Seine. A pair of restaurants, Al Mankal and 6 New York, sit across little Rue Debrousse from each other. The menus look inviting. But instead of competing for diners, their doors are not just locked but fenced off from the street. That’s true for so many businesses on both banks of the river, shuttered at least through the cauldron-lighting.

“Sorry that Paris is not up to par for this first week for its welcome and its joie de vivre,” Jerome Gangneux, who owns 6 New York with his wife, Cathy, wrote in an email. “… We are closing for five weeks, and see you on September 3 with a smile.”

It’s fair to say that every Olympic host city wants to present the best version of itself during the Games. But the reality is that no Olympic host city is the best version of itself during the Games. Gangneux said the businesses closest to the Opening Ceremonies route — four miles along the Seine, with stands built to hold the fans — were informed only a month ago that their neighborhood would be on quasi-lockdown, with even residents needing QR codes to gain entry at checkpoints.

“Hence the closing of our restaurant without even knowing if the Games will be a success,” he wrote, “knowing that hotels during this period are not full.”

And yet there is undeniable excitement. The flame-lighting was still two days off when a sold-out crowd packed the 69,000-seat Stade de France for Wednesday’s opening session of rugby sevens competition. French flags flew, taking up entire sections of the lower bowl. After two consecutive spectator-free, pandemic-addled Olympics, energy is back.

“Our excitement, it cannot be described,” said Thomas Vernoux, a French water polo player.

Here we go. The French are a proud people collectively but with a strong sense of individualism. Their country is in some ways on a precipice. The Olympics arrive with a mixture of joy and trepidation. They are supposed to unify. But whether a certain citizen feels more of the former or the latter is, in true French fashion, up to each and every one.

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