The special rapporteur of the Senate Finance Committee, Eric Jeansannetas (PS), expressed to AFP on Monday his “doubts” about respecting the timing of delivery of several Olympic projects, citing a risk of “budgetary slippages » linked to a possible delay.
The end of work on most of the nearly 70 Olympic projects is scheduled for the end of 2023, such as the athletes’ village in Saint-Denis, the main Olympic project. The company responsible for delivering these infrastructures (Solideo) has constantly reported a respected agenda. But during the examination, in committee, of the special report of the 2024 finance bill of the “Sport, youth and community life” mission on Tuesday, special rapporteur Eric Jeansannetas spoke of “risks” weighing on the delivery schedule Olympic works, as reported by the daily Le Monde.
“Last year, the budgetary documents indicated that most of the equipment will have been received for 2023, including the most important: the Arena Porte de La Chapelle, the renovated Stade de France, the Yves-du-Manoir stadium and the Marseille marina. However, the delivery of all this equipment, with the exception of the Yves-du-Manoir stadium, has been postponed until 2024. This is not reassuring,” he indicated. “The special rapporteur that I am simply pointed out that when there is a delay there can be budgetary slippages,” he told AFP, “but I am not expressing concerns, I am raising doubts”.
“Of the 70 works for which Solideo is responsible, no contractual availability date with the organizers has changed. We have no delays on the projects to be delivered,” Solideo assured AFP on Monday. “We have different stages between reception – which means the end of the work – and delivery to the organizers which occurs later. And this is what can perhaps create confusion,” she further suggested. Some projects will therefore be completed at the end of 2023, but the delivery date to the organizers will take place two to three months later, once the reservations have been lifted.
The senators must hear the general director of Solideo Nicolas Ferrand on November 15. “We should not see this as a controversy,” assures Eric Jeansannetas. “If in the next two months the projects are delivered, so much the better.” During its last report submitted to parliamentarians in July, the Court of Auditors said that certain projects were behind schedule. “Certain structures, affected by delays (athletes’ village, media village, Arena de la Porte de la Chapelle, etc.), are subject to optimization of schedules and reinforcement measures (extension of opening hours, increase of effective) to absorb them,” the magistrates explained in their report.
“If they were to persist, the reception dates could be postponed by a few weeks, thereby limiting the period of lifting of reservations before making it available to the Cojo (Games organizing committee, editor’s note) and the realization by this last of the temporary arrangements,” added the Court of Auditors. Pierre Moscovici, the first president of the Court of Auditors, assured in an interview with Le Parisien in July that he had not detected “any major risk” in the delivery of equipment, while ensuring that he remained “vigilant” due to the lack of “margin in terms of timetable”.
