Explainer: Why has an iron curtain been erected in central Paris?

Olympic security has barricaded central Paris off to all but a few residents who must show QR codes to get through armed checkpoints

It’s like a crime scene. Metal fences have been erected, paths cleared and restaurants lie empty. The barricades are being likened to an iron curtain and – in a level of security the DDR would have envied –residents or those with a medical reason need a QR code to get through checkpoints. Restricted areas have been designated as red or grey zones as part of anti-terrorist protections.

Yes, in a scene comparable to the dark days of Covid, Paris is in lockdown. This time however, it’s due to the Olympic Games which are for the first time ever being held largely outdoors under the slogan ‘en plein air’. “With events taking place away from the traditional stadium setting, sport will fill the city,” the organisers say. “The spectacle and the emotional experience will be completely immersive.” The Opening Ceremony will for the first time be held outside the stadium, in a four-hour boat parade along the Seine. 

There is currently no free access to the heart of Paris, with motorised vehicles banned from a wide perimeter around the river. The police installed have a security fence along the river which is where the Opening Ceremony will be held on Friday.“This means that to enter the area which runs along the Seine in Paris … you must have an authorisation,” said Paris police chief Laurent Nunez. “And you’ll be subject to an identity check, searches and pat-downs.” Armed police guard checkpoints, a la West/East Berlin. Generously, Nunez said the authorities would be a  little lenient on the first day for “educational purposes”. 

Security is tight: it’s the reason that residents are currently living in a 21st century version of Cold War Berlin. Snipers will be installed along the roofs of the waterside apartment blocks and anti-drone systems will be on the lookout. ‘Friendly drones’ that fail to declare their presence in the area beforehand “will be neutralised”, according to a lieutenant. A gang of sniffer dogs will be active throughout the Olympics. One is a three-year-old Malinois, Stimo, who will be fitted with a steel-reinforced muzzle. When unleashed on a threatening individual “the impact is equivalent to a boxer punch,” said his handler.

Yet, in another echo of Soviet sparseness, restaurants in the heart of Paris are empty. “No one thought about this,” one restaurant owner says. In some establishments, custom is down by 80 per cent. It’s just like Covid, moans a restaurateur. “They’ve locked me up like a prisoner,” said another, with just a touch of drama.

“The worst thing is that people don’t know that they have to have a QR code,” says Lilane Khalil, another restaurant owner. Presumably, they wouldn’t qualify anyway as QR codes are only given for residents, professional reasons or to those with medical appointments. 

In a boon for the city, the Seine has been officially announced clean and ready for elites to thrash through. Mayor Anne Hidalgo duly dipped in the e.Coli-free river last week, though President Emmanuel Macron has proved flakey. “He didn’t announce that he was going to swim before the Olympics, he announced that he was going to swim and he has always expressed this certainty,” a spokesperson for the president told journalists on Friday. “He will not necessarily have the opportunity to do so before the Games.” Perhaps he wasn’t issued with the appropriate iron-curtain-busting QR code.

Hype? Not so much

The background is a nation acutely aware of the social and economic costs of the Olympic Games. The full cost is expected to fall between €3-5bn at a time when many feel squeezed and bitter about Macron’s forced-through pension age rise. Organisers have hoped to limit costs by using existing infrastructure for up to 95 per cent of the events – ‘en plein air’. There have been – optimistic – estimates of a €3bn boon in the tourism sector but this is now looking rather unlikely. Air France has announced an expected €180m loss as tourists avoid the capital. Likewise, tour operators have announced a two per cent decrease in booking during the games.

On top of this, the government has been exposed for its brutal treatment of homeless people in Paris. In May it was revealed that the French government has evicted around 5,000 people from the capital, not always providing them with housing. The Olympic Village has been built in Seine-Saint-Denis, an area on the outskirts of the capital where a third of people are immigrants, the poverty rate is 28 per cent and there are many homeless people living in camps or abandoned buildings. In France, these suburbs are known as banlieue or ‘the place of the banished’. The forced exodus has been slammed as social cleansing. 

There have been some positives for the area: currently having the fewest swimming pools per head of anywhere in France, Saint-Denis will be granted 12 new or renovated public pools along with an aquatic centre. Staff for the Olympic Village are to be hired locally. But it’s always a gamble as to whether Olympic money boosts areas in the long term.

Due to this ambivalence or downright hostility, depending who you ask, the mayor’s symbolic swim in the Seine swelled in significance. Post plunge, Hidalgo emphasised that the positive effects of the games wouldn’t just be economic but would also include long-term environmental benefits. In May, 57 per cent of French said they were “unexcited” for the games. Will the joie de vivre of Friday’s ceremony manage to convince a few more to get excited?