PARIS — French taxpayers footed a nearly €6 billion bill to host the 2024 Paris
Olympics, the country’s highest audit authority said in a report published
Monday.
France’s Court of Auditors found state and local authorities spent €2.77 billion
to help organize the Games and an additional €3.19 billion on infrastructure.
The French government had initially promised that public funding for the Games
would cost around €1 billion.
Tony Estanguet, the president of the 2024 Paris Organizing Committee, disputed
the auditors’ figures in a response included in their report and said the true
public cost attributable to the event “does not exceed €2 billion.” He also
noted that the projected economic benefits linked to the Olympics are “three to
five times that amount.”
Both Estanguet and Prime Minister François Bayrou, whose response was also
included in the report, stressed that the Court of Auditors had failed to
adequately quantify the long-term benefits of the Games, including the
infrastructure investments that will benefit Parisians long after the Olympics
finished, and focused solely on tallying up expenditures.
For example, the French government spent an additional €214 million to extend
the Paris metro network to make Olympic sites accessible via public transport by
the time the Games began.
The president of the Court of Auditors projected before the Olympics began that
they would cost €3 to €5 billion. The report notes that the Games’ organizing
committee was “largely self-funded,” but that public funds were used to ensure
the event’s success.
Securing the Games ended up being particularly expensive. France spent some €665
million to deploy 35,000 police and gendarmes each day near the various events