“Hats off! That was one of the challenges,” said Green MP Sandrine Rousseau.

According to the MP, making the Seine swimmable “was part of the challenges.” She “remembers Jacques Chirac who promised to swim in the Seine and who did not manage to do it”. But Sandrine Rousseau reminds “that many rivers are extremely polluted today in France, precisely because we have thought of these rivers as being open sewers and dumping grounds of our industrialization”she laments. “That we have a form of reconquest of our natural spaces seems to me to be very good news,” she rejoices.

To make the Seine swimmable, the State invested nearly 1.4 billion euros, notably financing numerous sanitation works. Voices have criticized the State’s colossal investment to make the river swimmable during the Paris Olympic Games. “When I see that people are criticizing the 1.4 billion of the Seine, it is 1.4 billion that has a utility which is to restore a natural system,” explains Sandrine Rousseau.

While the 26th Winter Olympic Games have just been awarded to France by the IOC, subject to providing financial guarantees from the State and the regions, the Green MP is outraged that the Winter Olympics can still be organised when global warming threatens humanity: “Never! Never! No, no, no and no!”, she says. “We’re stopping this. There’s no more snow, there’s not going to be any more snow. These winter sports resorts and these Olympic Games in the Alps are only going to operate with artificial snow,” she denounces. “We can no longer continue in this model and I don’t know how to say it so that people become aware of the seriousness of the situation we are in.”she concluded.