Transcription

Security guards recruited from the ranks of the retired.

Subway tickets sold at double the usual price.

Students evicted from their rooms.

Today, we're going to talk about the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Welcome to another episode of Learn French with News.

As you probably know, the next Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held in Paris this summer. In this video, we take a look at six controversial issues surrounding the organization of these games.

As usual, you can download the French vocabulary sheet that we'll be covering in this video.

Just click on the link in the description.

In recent months, there have been a number of controversies in the media and on social networks surrounding the Olympic Games and their organization.

The first controversy concerns the price of metro tickets.

A typical metro ticket for a trip around Paris costs €2.15.

If you buy a book of 10, the unit price even drops to €1.70.

But don't expect that if you're coming to Paris for the Olympic Games.

From July 20 to September 8, 2024, the price of a ticket will rise to €4.

This represents an increase of 86%, which is quite enormous.

The book of 10 tickets will rise from €17 to €32.

I've mentioned metro tickets, but this naturally applies to all public transport, including buses and streetcars.

The Île-de-France region, which manages public transport, justified this price increase by saying that the transport offer would also increase by 15%.

As you'd expect, it caused quite a stir in the media and on social networks.

The second controversy concerns the official poster for these 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In early March 2024, the official poster was unveiled, and not everyone liked it.

It particularly displeased certain political figures on the French right and extreme right.

There are two main reasons for this.

Firstly, the disappearance of the cross overhanging the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides.

Les Invalides is a building in Paris that houses Napoleon's tomb.

So, above this building, there's usually a cross, and this cross was erased by the designer who did the Olympic Games poster.

A second element that bothered some people was the fact that there was no French flag represented on this poster.

As I was saying, right-wing and extreme right-wing personalities have protested.

It means they weren't happy, and they spoke up to say so.

According to them, the designer, the person who drew the poster, wanted to erase all traces of Christianity and French identity.

Christianity means belonging to the Christian religion.

The artist defended himself by speaking of an artistic vision and saying that he didn't particularly want to represent reality as it is.

As it is means in a conforming, identical manner.

The Olympic Games organizing committee defended it, so it defended itself, talking about a light-hearted, joyful artistic interpretation of a reinvented stadium-city.

He talks about a reinvented stadium-city, because the city has been somewhat modified to accommodate the various sporting events.

The third controversy, and this one has already been going on for a few months, concerns students who are going to be evicted from their homes, and therefore from their student rooms.

During the Olympic Games, students who usually occupy state-owned rooms, i.e. housing managed by the state, will be forced to leave.

They will be forced to leave their homes, at least for the duration of the Olympic Games.

In fact, the accommodation of just over 2,000 students will be requisitioned, so they will be taken over by the State from June 30, 2024.

The state wants to use these rooms to house people in charge of organization and security.

These rooms will be requisitioned to house firefighters, nurses, first-aiders and security guards.

As I was saying, this decision caused a great deal of controversy. And last summer, a trade union even launched legal proceedings against the requisitioning of this accommodation, to have it annulled so that the students could keep their accommodation.

Indeed, the union wanted only housing vacant on July 1ᵉʳ to be available for rent to the Olympic Games organizers. Vacant housing means housing without inhabitants, empty housing.

Because every year, some students return to their parents' homes for the summer, and these students will end their lease.

This solution, of course, would not have forced students who wanted to stay to leave and be rehoused.

A decision has been handed down, however, and it says that the state has every right to do this, to terminate these students' rental contract on June 30.

So that's what's going to happen.

But in return, the State, the government, must rehouse them.

They will also receive €100 in compensation and 2 tickets to events.

The fourth controversy concerns the search for volunteers.

In France, it's very common to call on volunteers for events such as concerts, festivals and sporting events like marathons and cycle races.

Despite this, the offer published by the Olympic Games organizers to recruit over 45,000 volunteers made many people sit up and take notice.

To "tick" means to disturb certain people who have seen a disguised job offer.

Indeed, it would have been an opportunity to offer temporary jobs to people who needed them.

And above all, combined with the rather excessive price of tickets to the events, this really upset a lot of people.

As well as being seen as a somewhat disguised job offer, it's the working conditions that have also got you talking a lot on social networks and in the media.

They're volunteers, so naturally they don't get paid, but these volunteers don't get housing either.

It's up to them to find their own accommodation.

And as you'd expect, during the Olympic Games period, the prices of hotel rooms or Airbnb have exploded, gone up.

If they don't come from the Paris region, they have to pay for their own accommodation, out of their own pockets.

Secondly, these unpaid volunteers won't be paid or compensated either.

When we say that they are not paid or compensated, this means that to come to Paris, if they live, for example, in Lyon or Bordeaux, it's up to them to pay out of their own pocket, i.e. at their own expense, for their train ticket or the petrol they'll be putting in their car.

Nor will these volunteers be offered free places at events. Generally speaking, when you're a volunteer at a festival, for example, you only work a few hours and then get free access to the concert.

What's more, none of these volunteers' missions take place directly on the sites where the events take place.

Secondly, you must be present for at least 10 days.

So it's true that it's a big commitment.

The offer also specified that assignments could last up to 10 hours a day, 48 hours a week and up to six days a week.

In France, we have a 35-hour week, and a lot of French people are attached to that. So it's true that here, once again, we're getting a bit of a ticket.

We're talking about a 48-hour week, plus no pay, so that shocked a lot of people.

But what will these volunteers be entitled to?

They will be entitled to public transport tickets to get to their assignment site and back home in the evening, but of course within a restricted area in Paris or the Paris region.

After that, they will also be entitled to one meal a day.

And finally, they will also be able to keep the outfit given to them by the organizers to carry out their mission. On social networks, there was a lot of mockery.

Some people even thought it was fake news, but it's real.

And despite all this, there were over 300,000 applications to volunteer for these Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Let me remind you that the organizers were looking for 45,000 volunteers.

The following controversy is quite amusing and, once again, has caused quite a stir on social networks, making many people smile.

Organizers had trouble recruiting security guards. They were having trouble recruiting security guards. So they launched a campaign aimed at a rather specific audience, a recruitment campaign to hire people.

This campaign was aimed at retirees, i.e. people over 65 years of age. The campaign was launched in February 2024. At the time it was launched, the organizers were still looking for over 7,000 security guards, so there were over 7,000 positions to fill.

Naturally, as I've already mentioned, this was a source of amazement and smiles. And on social networks, you could read a lot of things, and in particular that the organizers were so desperate not to be able to recruit, that nobody wanted to work for these Olympic Games, that they were obliged to do this and look among retired people for security guards.

The sixth controversy, about which I spoke briefly earlier, is the price of tickets.

The French government had announced that the Olympic Games would be affordable and accessible to everyone.

However, French people and those who wanted to buy tickets were quickly disillusioned when they saw how much they cost.

Disappointment is a word we use to say: We thought something was going to be good, and in fact it's not good at all.

Indeed, ticket prices quickly became unaffordable for a large part of the population, despite the fact that the Olympic Games are supposed to be a popular event.

To buy tickets, you had to register on a website and then you could be drawn at random.

Once we'd been drawn, we had a certain period of time, 48 hours, in which to buy tickets.

And in reality, of course, what happened was that cheap tickets went on sale, but they were gone in a day. So it was the people who had been drawn first who were able to benefit.

And ticket prices quickly went through the roof.

On the second day, for example, the cheapest tickets to the opening ceremony were priced at €1,600.

And tickets to see fencing or judo, for example, were already €250 on the second day, which is enormous.

In the days that followed, tickets for semi-finals in disciplines such as athletics were advertised at €690 or even €980.

Even some athletes were outraged, and took to social networks to express their displeasure.

This is particularly true of French judoka Amandine Buchard, bronze medallist at previous games.

She wrote on Twitter: Olympic Games accessible for all, you said. In fact, we need to make loans to the bank so that families and relatives can have the chance to come and see us.

That is, if there are any tickets left in the meantime.

When we're disgusted, it's because a situation doesn't suit us, that we're depressed.

The 2023 French cross-country champion also spoke, saying: "How can we charge such high prices for our sport?

And abroad too, for example, Belgium's Nafissatou Thiam, double Olympic heptathlon champion, said she wasn't even sure her family would be able to come and see her, given the exorbitant ticket prices.

The organizers and the French government have defended themselves on this issue.

And indeed, some media outlets have made comparisons with ticket prices from previous editions. And despite everything, it seems that the prices that are charged for these Olympic Games 2024 in Paris are substantially similar to the prices to attend the events during previous editions.

Substantially similar, which means it's almost the same price.

In short, except for certain games like Rio, where prices were much lower.

That's it, this video is over.

If you've heard of any other stories related to these Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, or others that are a little controversial, don't hesitate to share them in the comments.

Don't forget that you can download the free worksheet that will help you revise all the words we've seen today.

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