Turf wars and strategy fights have prevented organizers from making real progress toward their extremely ambitious vision for the Games.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron and his allies are angry over what they see as haphazard, ineffective planning for the 2030 Winter Olympics.
With the Milan-Cortina Games having closed Sunday, the focus now turns to the French Alps, which will host the next edition of the quadrennial winter sports extravaganza.
But the French Alps 2030 Organizing Committee (Cojop) has been plagued by infighting since its inception in 2024. Turf wars and strategy fights have prevented Cojop from making real progress toward its ambitious vision for the 2030 Games.
Concerns are now growing in Paris that mismanagement of such a high-profile event will reinforce the reputation France has developed in recent years as ungovernable and financially careless.
The latest setbacks include the resignations of Cojop’s operations and communications directors in December and January over strategic disagreements. Cojop President Edgar Grospiron said on Sunday that the organization’s chief executive was in the process of departing as well.
French Sports Minister Marina Ferrari responded by calling an emergency meeting to ensure the “rapid and complete clarification on the governance and stability of the organization.”
Two former advisers to Macron, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they had been told that the French president privately kicked up a fuss earlier this month over just how bad things have gotten. An elected official involved in planning for the Games said the feeling inside the Elysée Palace is that “enough is enough” regarding the chaos at Cojop.
“They’re all clowns. We need to take back control,” one of the former aides said.
Grospiron appears to be on the hot seat as the names of potential replacements, including two former prime ministers in Michel Barnier — who helped organize the 1992 Winter Olymics in Albertville —and Jean Castex, have begun circulating in the French press.
Macron hasn’t yet called for Grospiron, a former Olympic freestyle skiing champion, to step down, according to a current presidential adviser. But the president’s trusted prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is planning to take a larger role in the process and hopes to “put things in order,” a different current adviser to Macron said. Lecornu is set to visit the Alps for the formal arrival of the Olympic flag on Monday.
Cojop did not respond to an email from POLITICO requesting comment. The International Olympic Committee referred POLITICO to a Feb. 4 statement from Cojop saying all of its teams “are fully mobilized and focused on their mission.”
Daring to commit
Grospiron last year pledged to make the 2030 Winter Olympics the cheapest in history, but that will require getting sponsors on board — and so far they have been reticent. Cojop has yet to announce any sponsorships.
“Private partners are seeing the bad publicity surrounding Alps 2030 and aren’t daring to commit themselves,” said an individual working on planning for the Games.
Keeping costs down will be tough given the logistical challenges of the event. Unlike Paris 2024, which took place mainly in the French capital, the 2030 Winter Olympics will stretch over a 600-kilometer region spanning multiple French jurisdictions.
Local leaders are already fighting over who gets to host what, and the situation has gotten so messy that officials were forced to delay the map of Olympic venues last fall.
Laurent Wauquiez, a prominent lawmaker from the neighboring region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes who used to lead the Les Républicains conservative party, has been pushing hard to ensure his constituency hosts much of the action.
The president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Renaud Muselier, told POLITICO he and Wauquiez had butted heads before agreeing to split certain events between their respective jurisdictions.
Musilier said he and Wauquiez had agreed to have alpine skiing events in the north, while freestyle skiing and events on ice would be held further south.
But Wauquiez, according to a parliamentary adviser who has closely followed planning for the 2030 Games, pushed to exclude Val d’Isère’s famed ski resorts from the event at the expense of those on his turf that are closer to other proposed Olympic sites — angering the likes of Barnier, who for years lived near Val d’Isère.
Wauquiez did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
Those defending Cojop say there is still plenty of time to get things right. For now, the committee is temporarily turning to one of the architects of the successful Paris Olympics in 2024, Etienne Thobois, to lay out a new organizational roadmap going forward.
“Cojop will communicate at the end of this procedure and calls on all parties concerned to ensure the smooth running of the mission, in a spirit of collective responsibility,” the organization said in its Feb. 4 statement.