It's celebrated abroad, but hostile in France: Mayor Anne Hidalgo reinvents Paris – just in time for the Olympics. Their goal is to make the big city CO2 neutral by 2050.

IAnne Hidalgo has never been seen in a swimsuit in Paris. That will soon change: in the summer, the 64-year-old mayor wants to jump into the Seine River and swim a few laps there. “In July we will bathe in the Seine,” Hidalgo said at the traditional New Year's reception in the imposing town hall overlooking the river. He took the opportunity to invite the regional prefect, Marc Guillaume, to accompany him on this “historic immersion in the water”. The top official in the dark suit just smirked.

Hidalgo said their leap into the Seine comes “more than 30 years after Jacques Chirac's promise”. In 1990, the then mayor and later president promised Parisians that from 1993 they would be able to swim in the Seine again. But the water quality could not be sufficiently improved. The main problem is fecal bacteria. When it rains heavily, the canal system in Paris overflows into the river. Everything that goes down the toilet ends up in the water. That's why swimming has been banned for a century.