France's top auditor says Olympics security costs poorly managed

PARIS :France's top auditors praised the organisation of last year's Paris Olympic Games on Monday but also chided the failure to forecast a 2 billion euro ($2.34 billion) security bill. 

With security only vaguely projected in advance, the costs in fact came to 1.7 billion euros in temporary spending and 300 million in longer-term costs, the Cour des Comptes said in a report published on Monday.

"The security expenditure ... was high, and very long underestimated. But this is not a case of cost overruns – it is a case of deficient forecasting," it said of the enormous operation to keep athletes and spectators safe. 

"The sums spent are not in themselves excessive given the political choice to stage the Games in the heart of Europe’s densest city, but it is abnormal not to anticipate the cost of such an event,” Cour president Pierre Moscovici told a press conference, recommending better planning in future.

France hosts the Winter Olympics in 2030.

Despite the large unforecasted security bill, there was no overall budgetary slippage, Moscovici said, after France had estimated a 6.8 billion euro cost for the whole event, excluding security and transport.

For a country that saw violent urban unrest in 2023 and the chaotic Champions League final in 2022, the safe execution of the Games was nonetheless a victory with 15 million spectators enjoying events at 42 venues.

Infrastructure delivery was a high point. 

Solideo, the public body created in 2017 to supervise Olympic construction, handed over 70 projects on time and within the 1.68 billion euro budget envelope set by law: a rarity in Olympic history, where delays and overruns are the norm.

The auditors noted that reliance on existing venues and limited new builds helped contain