Don’t blame 2024 Olympics for France’s social issues, says sports activities minister | Paris

France’s sports activities minister has warned towards making the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris a scapegoat for folks’s anger and frustration over social issues.

Amélie Oudéa-Castéra was talking after rows over the excessive price of tickets for the Video games and ideas that homeless folks had been to be moved out of the town to make room in funds accommodations for sports activities followers and vacationers.

“We shouldn’t make the Olympics the scapegoat of all our frustrations. It’s vital to not distort the details and blame the Olympic Video games for all our social issues,” Oudéa-Castéra stated on Wednesday. “I don’t need us to combine every part up. We do have main challenges over emergency shelter, nevertheless it’s not the Olympics’ fault,” she advised France 2 tv.

She stated plans to maneuver homeless folks to areas exterior Paris had been began in April this yr and denied this was linked to the Video games.

“Right this moment we now have round 200,000 emergency locations, a report since 2017, and we all know there’s a really robust focus within the Île-de-France … we now have to take care of this and provide a greater service. We can not blame the Olympics for all the issues of society,” she stated.

The housing minister, Olivier Klein, made a hyperlink between the Video games and the issue of a scarcity of emergency shelter for homeless folks within the capital throughout a speech to parliament on 5 Might.

He stated funds accommodations most frequently used for homeless folks and asylum seekers supposed to supply rooms at a premium through the Rugby World Cup in September and the Olympics subsequent July. He stated as many as 5,000 emergency lodging beds could possibly be misplaced.

The concept of making new amenities round France paid for by the state to quickly accommodate homeless folks from Paris, a lot of whom are migrants, is already inflicting concern in some areas.

Agence France-Presse reported final week that the federal government had been asking native prefects since mid-March to create short-term reception centres in all however two French areas in an effort to unlock lodge area in and round Paris.

Philippe Salmon, the mayor of Bruz, in north-west Brittany, voiced his opposition to plans for a brand new centre in his city of 18,000 folks. “We aren’t in favour of putting in such a holding centre in our municipality underneath situations that we take into account unworthy,” he advised French media.

Eric Constantin, the pinnacle of the Abbé Pierre Basis in Île-de-France, stated he doubted this could obtain a long-lasting resolution to the issue.

He additionally solid doubt on the suggestion that the timing of the Olympic Video games and the programme “to ship migrants to the provinces” was a coincidence, suggesting the federal government would possibly wish to guarantee there “are not any extra camps earlier than thousands and thousands of individuals arrive in France”.

Paris Olympics organisers have additionally confronted fierce criticism over the price of tickets. The opening ceremony, to be held alongside the River Seine, will price between €90 to €2,700 to look at from one of many 100,000 locations obtainable on the decrease quayside. Between 500,000 and 600,000 locations on the higher quays are anticipated to be supplied free of charge. Tickets for the closing ceremony on the Stade de France will price between €45 and €1,600.

The president of the organisers, Tony Estanguet, stated the goal was to make the occasion open to the “best quantity attainable”, insisting that the 5.3% of tickets that price €400-plus would assist finance 4m tickets costing €50 or much less.