More than a month after Anne Hidalgo’s trip to Tahiti, many gray areas persist as to the real reasons for this trip. The town hall spoke today.
From October 16 to 21, Anne Hidalgo traveled to the South Pacific, New Caledonia and then French Polynesia. Accompanied by Pierre Raban, deputy for sports and Jacques Martial, deputy for Overseas Territories, the mayor of Paris had the mission of going to the places where certain events of the 2024 Olympic Games are to take place.
On October 21, the key date of Anne Hidalgo’s trip, she was expected in Tahiti to visit the infrastructures of the Teahupoo site which will host the surfing events of the Olympic Games. A visit which nevertheless never took place, officially because of “local tensions”. After postponing the visit until the next day, Anne Hidalgo will not go there and will ultimately be represented by her sports assistant, Pierre Raban.
This is how the controversy surrounding this trip was born. While Anne Hidalgo will never be present at the official visit to the said site, we learn that the mayor has in fact already left Tahiti to go to the island of Raiatea where her daughter has just settled and where she is spending two weeks “private” vacation. An official trip whose cost is around 60,000 euros according to figures transmitted by the Town Hall: 40,955 euros in transport costs and 18,545 euros in accommodation and catering costs. A justified amount, according to the Paris town hall.
The opposition and in particular Rachida Dati protested against this holiday-like trip. The mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris is calling for more transparency regarding Anne Hidalgo’s trip and explains that she “has still not produced all of the supporting documents for this trip, nor the link with the interests of Paris”. Ms. Dati asks that the case be handled by the courts and deplores the lack of independence of the ethics commission of the Paris town hall, responsible for examining the case, which is made up of members appointed by Anne Hidalgo herself. even.
Lively exchanges between the mayor and Rachida Dati
The Paris Council, which began today and will continue over the next three days, was punctuated by heated exchanges between the mayor of Paris and the mayor of the 7th arrondissement. The latter denounces in particular the “casualness” of Ms. Hidalgo: “It’s the same [désinvolture] which costs you very dearly, so to speak, as part of your alibi trip to Tahiti, from which we learned again this morning that you benefited from a helicopter even though you made people believe that you were doing cycling on a Parisian cycle path”. In reaction to the numerous barbs sent by Rachida Dati, Ms Hidalgo replied: “Your insinuations, your permanent attacks, you have summoned the press so that there is a show”. To which she adds: “You are, gentlemen and ladies journalists, summoned to the Datishow”.
To deal with the protests, the town hall recalled that the ethics commission had been contacted in advance in order to publish a public notice on Ms. Hidalgo’s travels. The commission, chaired by Yves Charpenel, former first advocate general at the Court of Cassation, also clarified that no public funds were used by the mayor “for personal purposes”. In the press release published Friday, the commission considers that the mayor’s travels “are regular from an ethical point of view”. It was also specified that Ms. Hidalgo herself covered the price of her return ticket to Paris, her relatives confirm that she traveled in economy class with a low-cost airline.
After this wave of protest, Ms. Hidalgo announced last Thursday that she wanted to make public the travel expenses incurred by elected officials as part of their mandate. Emmanuel Grégoire, the first deputy mayor of Paris, confirmed during a press conference that the mayor will propose a reform of the code of ethics relating to travel during the Paris Council.