With six months to go before the 2024 Olympic Games, will Paris be ready?

Olympics organisers and French authorities have been sending mixed messages about the state of ongoing preparations for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, sparking doubts and making headlines about whether Paris will successfully pull off hosting the Games.  

French President Emmanuel Macron admitted in December that authorities were preparing "a plan B [and] a plan C" for the opening ceremony, just in case it can’t take place on the River Seine as planned.  

But Paris 2024’s director of planning and coordination, Lambis Konstantinidis, told FRANCE 24 that preparations for the ambitious ceremony are going as planned despite complex logistics.  

“Clearly, what we're trying to do for the Paris Games is a fairly unprecedented project that requires a lot of studies and a lot of people involved. Obviously, it will be ready when the time comes, but not before.” 

Konstantinidis said the contingency plans put in place in collaboration with the French interior ministry gives organisers confidence that they will be able to deliver the opening ceremony and Games that they have “dreamed of”. 

The Paris region’s police force will be boosted from 35,000 to 73,000 officers to ensure security during the Olympics.  

But France's police unions have already been leading “Black Thursday" protests, denouncing the conditions under which they will be working and the lack of bonus pay. Unions say there is a lack of organisation and information about security measures from the interior ministry.   

"We're six months away from the Olympic Games and even the police officers don't know what they're going to do, how they're going to do it, or where they're going to go. It's about time the [Macron] administration gets organised,” said Fabien