Last week Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the Olympic aquatic centre that will host the swimming and diving events at this summer’s Paris games. The President was delighted with what he saw, boasting to the press pack that the centre is ‘exemplary from an environmental point of view’.
Macron’s party expect the Republicans to make their move in the coming weeks.
Unfortunately, from a financial point of view, the centre is anything but exemplary. The initial estimate in 2017 was that the centre would cost €70 million to construct, a figure that was soon revised to €90 million. the final expenditure was €188 million.
It is not just the Olympic aquatic centre where French budgeting has gone awry. The Republic’s accounts are a mess. Last month, France’s national statistics institute (Insee) announced that the country’s deficit has soared 22 per cent in one year to 5.5 percent of GDP, equivalent to €154 billion (£132 billion).
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