Several hundred people gathered on Saturday in Grenoble, Isère, to demonstrate against the organization of the 2030 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in the French Alps, which they consider costly and harmful to the environment.
While the 2026 Winter Olympics begin this weekend in Cortina, Italy, several groups opposed to holding the 2030 Games in the Alps have called for this “festive stroll” to denounce an absurd “budgetary waste” in a context of global warming where more and more mid-mountain resorts are giving up skiing for lack of sufficient snow.
LFI and EELV deputies present on site
In the procession of 500 people, according to the organizers, joined by local LFI and EELV deputies, demonstrators brandished signs “JO = concrete, tar, pollution” or “No JO”.
“There is nothing of priority in these expenses and yet we absolutely want to go there,” denounced Marie, 30 years old. This is a real headlong rush, even in high mountain areas which are still relatively preserved at the moment. »
Protesters covered the Olympic cauldron from the 1968 Winter Games with a cardboard model of a burning planet Earth. “The Olympic movement is rotting a little from the inside. I remind you that the map of the test sites is not even fixed. There is a real problem of governance,” declared environmentalist regional councilor Pierre Janot.
A subsidy of 3.5 million euros suspended
On Thursday, the Olympic law was definitively adopted in Parliament, a decisive step for the realization of the Alps 2030 project. But the organizing committee for the 2030 Olympics (Cojop) chaired by former Olympic champion Edgar Grospiron, is shaken by internal quarrels and a wave of resignations.
On Friday, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Rhône-Alpes region, which is due to host the 2030 Winter Games with Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, announced that it was suspending 3.5 million euros in subsidies (out of 7.5 million announced) intended for the functioning of the committee to encourage it to overcome this governance crisis.
