Emmanuel Macron announced this Friday, February 10 that the third United Nations conference which will take place in 2025 will take place in Nice. The objective is to reach an agreement to protect the oceans.
In 2025, Nice will host the United Nations Ocean Conference. The announcement was made by the President of the Republic on social networks this Friday, February 10 at the end of the afternoon.
The mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi thanked Emmanuel Macron on Twitter: “Thanks to the President @EmmanuelMacron for his commitment and trust. The choice of Nice to host the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference is a magnificent recognition of our mobilization to build the green and blue capital of the Mediterranean”.
In a press release, Christian Estrosi reacted to this announcement:
This is fair recognition of Nice’s commitment to the preservation of marine environments. (…) The choice of the President of the Republic to retain Nice as the host city of this international summit also comes, a few months after its entry into the world heritage of UNESCO, to attest to the capacity of our city to prepare and welcome the biggest international events in the service of the influence of France.
This conference will be organized by France and Costa Rica, said Emmanuel Macron. The first UN conference for the oceans was held in New York in 2017 and the second in Lisbon in 2022.
This announcement is not a surprise. During the Salon des Maires, which took place last November, our colleagues from Var-Matin reported having heard President Emmanuel Macron promise Christian Estrosi that his city would have the right to “two major international meetings, on the scale of a Cop or a G20, over a period of one month”.
This is not the first time that Nice will host such an event. From December 7 to 10, 2000, Nice hosted a European summit which resulted in the Treaty of Nice. This treaty made it possible to develop the institutional system of the European Union with a view to enlargement to 28 Member States.
More recently, a little further west on the Côte d’Azur, Cannes was the host city of the G20 in 2011.
More than twelve years later, it was time for the Côte d’Azur to be put back on the decision-making map.
On the other hand, Nice is more accustomed to hosting large-scale sporting events. Christian Estrosi announced in January that the final phase of the Ironman triathlon competition will take place in Nice for the next 4 years.
In addition, on November 30, the city was chosen to host the arrival of the Tour de France 2024. The competition will take place from June 29 to July 21, 2024 and – for once – will end its race not on the Champs-Élysées but on the Promenade des Anglais.
Why deviate from tradition? The famous Parisian alley will be occupied by the 2024 Olympic Games.
The city had already hosted the first stage of the Tour de France in 2020.