Finally some good news! Expected for months, the Olympic law was definitively adopted on Thursday in Parliament. This is a decisive step for the realization of the Winter Olympics project in the Alps in 2030 which, however, remains weighed down by the governance crisis within its organizing committee.
Described as an “essential toolbox for the successful delivery of the Games” by Sports Minister Marina Ferrari, the text – resulting from a compromise between deputies and senators in a joint committee – was largely approved on Thursday in the Senate by show of hands. The deputies did the same on Tuesday by 390 votes to 99. The rebellious and environmentalist parliamentarians voted against.
This is the end of a long parliamentary journey for this Olympic bill adopted at first reading in June by the upper house, then put on hold by the political crisis.
A “good milestone”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) itself welcomed this “good news” and a “good step forward” on Tuesday, according to Pierre-Olivier Beckers, responsible for supervising the preparations for these winter games organized by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regions.
The text allows temporary exemptions from common law in matters of town planning, housing, health, work but also security – a section of which certain measures have been denounced on the left as repressive.
The experimentation of an algorithmic video surveillance device, a test phase of which was launched on the occasion of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and ended in March 2025, and notably extended until 2027. Just like the possibility for private security agents to carry out visual inspections of vehicles and their trunks.
The environmental question was also debated throughout the examination: “the artificialization linked to the Alps 2030, or around 20 hectares, will be counted” in the quotas for the zero net artificialization objective (ZAN) “but at the national level”, the minister was keen to emphasize on Tuesday, the idea being not to penalize the municipalities concerned.
Marina Ferrari also highlighted an amendment made by the government “requiring the Organizing Committee to organize at least one physical public meeting per community hosting events or an Olympic site”.
Denouncing the absence of “public participation in the decision-making process” before the candidacy as well as since the awarding of the 2030 Olympics, the JOP 2030 citizen collective launched three procedures, before the administrative courts of Lyon and Marseille and before a UN body in Geneva.
The text allows temporary exemptions
At the end of January, the Marseille court demanded from Solideo, responsible for the 2030 Olympic works, more transparency in communication and information concerning its projects. The establishment appealed to the Court of Cassation, indicating that it was “already fully engaged in a consultation process on all of the works”.
The Alps 2030 project is also suffering from an open crisis within its organizing committee (Cojop), after the resignations in two months of its operations director, its communications director and the president of the remuneration committee.
The latter, Bertrand Méheut, former president of the Canal + group and ex-boss of the PMU, notably pointed out in a letter a “significant drift which leads (him) to doubt the success of the project, whether in terms of deadlines and costs”.
The adoption of this law must allow “an awareness of all stakeholders in this issue, including within Cojop, of the need to work together and give a united image to the national representation, the inhabitants and the economic actors of the territory”, urged centrist senator Jean-Michel Arnaud, rapporteur of the bill, on Thursday.
“The latest information surrounding the organization of Alps 2030 hardly calls for optimism for the moment and worries me, in my capacity as co-chair of the working group responsible for monitoring the preparation of these JOPs,” noted PS MP Belkhir Belhaddad on Tuesday. He also “questions” “the budgetary envelope of the organization”, due to “the absence, to date, of the support of certain leading private partners”.
In November, Cojop said it “wished to be able to announce the first partnerships to [les JO] Milan-Cortina”, whose opening ceremony will take place on Friday.
