Paris Olympics and Paralympics cost taxpayer nearly 6 billion euros

 

Panama's Arturo Harmodio Deliser Espinosa, Kenya's Ferdinand Omanyala and Italy's Chituru Ali compete in the men's 100m heat of the athletics event at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on August 3, 2024. [AFP]

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and Paralympics cost the French state just under 6 billion euros ($6.9 billion), the national audit body announced in an "initial estimate" on Monday.

The organisation of the two sporting extravaganzas last summer cost 2.77 billion euros, which included 1.4 billion euros for security.

A further 3.19 billion euros was spent on work linked to infrastructure projects.

The Olympics ran from July 26 to August 11,  while the Paralympics took place from August 28 to September 8, with organisers making the most of historic sites in central Paris, either as venues or the backdrop to the events.

The Games were widely hailed as highly successful.

The national audit body said there would be a "heightened interest" in the figures because France is also preparing to host the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.

It is the first time actual figures have been announced, although the president of the national audit body, Pierre Moscovici, had in 2024 said they would cost the state "three, maybe four, five billion euros".

Moscovici, a former French finance minister and European Union Commissioner, added that the real costs would only be known at the end of the Games.

Until now, only the costs of the local organising committee (COJO) of 4.4 billion euros, which represented a surplus of 76 million euros, have been made public.

That figure came almost exclusively from private financing and from Solideo, the body responsible for delivering Olympic construction projects, which was in part publicly financed.

A more detailed report will be published in October as other costs are not yet known.

The body added that because of a lack of concrete information, the figures did not include "the positive and negative impact the Games had on economic activity".

It said, however, that the Games were "indisputably a success with the public and the media".

Another report on the legacy of the Games will be published in 2026.