Noch the initiative with the somewhat cumbersome name “Rhein Ruhr City 2032” and the grand plan to bring both the Olympic and Paralympic Games to Germany is far from being there. But an important step has apparently been achieved during the calm of the Corona summer. The entrepreneur Michael Mronz, who is promoting the idea as a private project, was able to convince the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) to force an official application to the International Olympic Committee, provided that a public survey in the 14 participating municipalities leads to a positive vote.
The initiative agreed with the DOSB on “how the path to a possible application could look like,” said Mronz on Tuesday at an event with Dagmar Freitag (SPD), the chairman of the sports committee in the Bundestag, in their constituency in Iserlohn. This path differs fundamentally from previous application projects, explained Mronz and spoke of a “paradigm shift”: Until the population has voted, the project will remain exclusively in the hands of the private initiative; the DOSB only fulfills an accompanying function. According to Mronz, this has a decisive advantage over the last series of attempts to bring the Olympic Games to Germany that failed because of the number of votes: “In the citizen survey, sports policy is no longer up for vote, and politics is not up for vote, but a concept is available Poll.”
The deep distrust of organizations surrounded by stories of corruption such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the anger of citizens about local politicians who too often waste tax money on completely overpriced large projects should not play a role this time. In addition, the plan provides for a reliable cost calculation for the entire time up to the graduation ceremony to be available before the vote. These calculations should show exactly what funds come from private sources, what sums the federal government is contributing and what amounts will flow into the Olympic project from the municipal budgets involved. A vote should be available in 2021, at the latest in early 2022. If the citizens of a single city were against it, another location could step in. The entire project would stay alive.
Good starting point
The Olympic dreams of Berlin are now out of the world. DOSB President Alfons Hörmann had already declared in February that the Rhine-Ruhr “clearly had the better starting position”, and the state sports association in the federal capital had admitted that 2032 would come too early. An application for 2036 or 2040, however, was still considered possible, now Rhine-Ruhr has an advantage for these years as well. Even the Chancellor Angela Merkel, who during her tenure never got enthusiastic about German Olympic applications, seems to be open to this project. Hendrik Wüst (CDU), the transport minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, tweeted during a Merkel visit last week to Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW): “The Chancellor says when meeting #Ruhrkonferenz & #NRW -Kabinett support the #Bundesregierung for the #Olympic application. ”Dagmar Freitag described the mood towards the project in the federal political Berlin as“ open-minded ”.
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