(personal underlines)
Paris is a city afraid
The New Year’s Eve concert on the Champs Élysées has been cancelled for security reasons. Paris was supposed to host its usual spectacle. A free open-air concert at the Arc de Triomphe, video projections on the monument and the midnight festivities that once drew close to a million people. Instead, the concert has been scrapped. It will be replaced on national television with a prerecorded concert filmed weeks ago with a handpicked crowd to mimic a celebration Paris no longer believes it can safely host. A capital once famed for its public life now performs it under studio conditions.
It marks the collapse of what used to be one of the simplest pleasures of Parisian life. For decades families and friends would spill out onto the streets on New Year’s Eve. Families, couples carrying a bottle of champagne, tourists wrapped in scarves, all drifting towards the Champs Élysées to count down the final seconds of the year. It was spontaneous and cheerful and open to everyone. That Paris no longer exists.
Over recent years ordinary Parisians quietly stopped going. The Champs Élysées on any holiday weekend has become a no-go zone. The crowds have changed. The atmosphere’s changed. I remember hosting American friends one New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago. They suggested walking up to the Champs Élysées at midnight because it was the thing to do. We persuaded them it wasn’t a good idea. Anyone who lives here understands why.
This year what was once the celebration has been reduced to a simulation. Paris must now film a celebration in advance because it cannot trust itself to manage a real one. The city that staged the Olympics cannot handle a national holiday. Paris, a capital that used to defy threats, can no longer manage its crowds.
In recent years the avenue has become the predictable destination for trouble. Large groups stream in from the suburbs on major nights and the pattern repeats itself. Burning scooters. Smash and grab attacks on luxury shops. Running fights with police. Dozens of arrests. Last year there were more than two hundred in Paris alone. Television networks keep a running tally of the number of cars torched across the country. During the Champions League celebrations this summer there were hundreds.
The French state understands all of this. The problem has only gotten worse with the transport reform which cuts the price of public transport for residents of the suburbs while raising them for travel within central Paris itself. Presented as ‘social justice’, it makes it cheaper than ever for huge numbers to surge into the centre from the suburbs on major nights. Parisians now pay more to move around central Paris, while the journey in from the suburbs has never been more affordable. The consequences are obvious. The city and the police are no longer willing to face them.
France spent billions on Olympic security and deployed an army of police officers. The fireworks will still take place at midnight, but they will rise over a boulevard the authorities no longer consider safe for real celebration. The city knows where the pressure lies. It knows who floods into the avenue on nights like these. It knows how quickly things can turn.
The threat of terrorism is also ever present. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez has again raised the threat level for the Christmas period, citing six plots thwarted last year. Many involved very young attackers and most were unknown to the intelligence services. The authorities insist this isn’t the reason for cancelling this year’s celebrations.
Even during the pandemic the city managed partial celebrations. For a decade the Champs Élysées concert has been billed as a moment of national unity. A secular gathering watched by millions live on television. A chance for Paris to present itself as the city where the country comes together. That illusion’s now over. The 2025 version will take place in a controlled studio environment. Paris will broadcast its own celebrations while quietly discouraging its residents from leaving their homes.
The political reactions underline the point. The right calls it capitulation. Bruno Retailleau describes it as the triumph of rising violence over public authority. Emmanuel Grégoire, Mayor Hidalgo’s former deputy and now the socialist candidate for mayor, has said it’s a serious failure of ‘civic responsibility’. He compared it to cancelling the Bastille Day parade. Even the mayor of the 8th district of Paris, who supports the decision to cancel the celebrations, admits openly that the avenue isn’t designed for the crowds who now pour in.
Paris has spent two decades in the grip of an ideological project that ignores reality. The city promised to be greener, cleaner and more progressive. What it’s become is brittle and dangerous. A capital that survives its major events only by cancelling them or surrounding them with police barriers. The Olympics briefly concealed the problem. They didn’t solve it.
The cancellation of New Year’s Eve on the Champs Élysées is confirmation that Paris is no longer is in control of its public space. Paris is certainly more dangerous than in the past. A capital city that can safeguard an Olympics with 45,000 police but now can’t manage New Year’s Eve. The prerecorded concert with a handpicked audience is only the latest symptom. France’s open-door policies have had consequences. The once grand avenue des Champs-Élysées will stay half-abandoned on the night that once defined it. France deserves better than a Potemkin party.
