In an interview with AFP published this Sunday, November 10, Anne Hidalgo made the success of the 2024 Olympics a showcase of her action at the helm of Paris town hall and tackled her rival, Rachida Dati.
For the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, the success of the Olympic Games swept away the flood of “Trumpist attacks” from the Parisian right carried by her rival Rachida Dati against her policy of transforming the capital which reduces the place of the car.
Arriving at the end of his mandate, the socialist councilor continues to maintain the suspense over a third candidacy in 2026. “The time has not yet come”, estimates Anne Hidalgo in an interview with AFP published this Sunday, November 10, denying the “rumors” of a departure for Brussels to take over as head of a foundation.
“She doesn't want to run again, that's pretty clear to everyone,” a relative of Anne Hidalgo, 65, who took charge of City Hall in 2014, told AFP. .
In the meantime, the PS mayor seems to be taking her revenge against Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture in the running for mayor of Paris, and the “Hidalgo bashing” to which she was the subject via the #SaccageParis movement on social networks, notably after his historically low score in the 2022 presidential election.
A “success” crowning “nine years of work”
This summer, the success of the Olympic Games “confirmed in the eyes of all that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, that it was capable of transforming itself, of being more peaceful, of having less pollution while preserving its heritage”, believes the elected official.
A “success” which crowned “nine years of work” and which made “all these sterile controversies that we had undergone collapse like a house of cards”.
“Lies carried mainly by the Trumpist right of Rachida Dati”, mayor of the 7th arrondissement whose opposition group “Changer Paris” was recently demoted to second position in the Paris Council.
“They screamed so much, were so outrageous, and echoed so much by everyone, including the mainstream media, that people ended up believing that the Olympics would be hell.”
“During the Games, I was stopped every day in the street by people who said to me, ‘But how could someone tell us such things?’ And it continues,” she says. “It creates antibodies,” confides the mayor.
Similar vision on the legacy of the Olympics with the president
She is pleased that Emmanuel Macron, whom she met alone in October – a first since 2017 – “shares” her vision of the legacy of the Olympics. Both on the rings on the Eiffel Tower, which it wants to maintain until 2028, and on the transformation of the Eiffel Tower/Pont d'Iéna/Trocadéro axis, an emblematic site of the capital “magnified” by the Games.
After the partial pedestrianization of the Pont d'Iéna, the municipality plans to transform the Trocadéro roundabout, in front of the Palais de Chaillot, to reduce the space for cars there as on the Place de la Bastille.
A project which the right-wing mayor of the 16th arrondissement opposes, and “which the 'right Dati', obviously, will also oppose because it has made the car its hobby horse”, sighs the PS mayor.
“We suspect that she has very strong links with the automobile world,” she slips while Rachida Dati is being prosecuted for corruption in part of the Carlos Ghosn affair, former CEO of Renault- Nissan.
“I hope that justice will do its job and that as 2026 approaches, Parisians will know exactly who Madame Dati works for,” snaps the PS mayor.
Limit to 50 km/h and limited traffic zone
Its latest flagship measures, the speed limit to 50 km/h on the ring road and the establishment of a “limited traffic zone” in the city center, have sparked controversy over the way it decides.
“For more than ten years, the right, Rachida Dati, Valérie Pécresse (LR president of the Ile-de-France region)… say that I have not consulted, and consider that electric vehicles will solve everything.
Except that since 2012, pollution in Paris has fallen by 40% and this is completely correlated to the drop in traffic which is also 40%”, notes the councilor. “What I blame them for is the lack of intellectual honesty by modifying the reality of scientific data, while the facts are there.
By 2030, it is “absolutely essential” to continue to reduce atmospheric pollution “which causes 2,500 deaths per year in Paris”. In this sense, she wishes to continue her “gentle revolution” such as the pedestrianization of “school streets” acclaimed by all Parisians, including most right-wing mayors.
