The Italian parliament on Tuesday voted to back Rome’s bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is a strong supporter of Rome’s candidacy and Italy’s parliament has now thrown its weight behind the bid.
“Today, the Italian parliament adopted, by a large majority, a clear and indisputable position on the candidature of Rome to the Olympic Games of 2024,” read a statement on the bid Web site. “It is a strong yes, an expression of the popular will, which blows away controversies and gives to the city and the country an important opportunity for economic redemption and the revival of international image.”
The show of support from Italy’s parliament is unlikely to quash calls for a public referendum from the small, left-wing movement Radicali Italiani, which cites spiraling costs of recent Olympic Games.
Bid chairman Luca di Montezemolo and Italian Olympic Committee president Giovanni Malago have pointed to the nearly unanimous vote in favor of the candidacy by Rome’s city council last year, while an Ipsos poll promoted by the bid committee recently found that three out of four Italians are in favor of the candidacy, out of 2,200 people surveyed.
The German port city of Hamburg dropped out of the 2024 race in November last year after its bid was defeated in a referendum.
The International Olympic Committtee is to select the 2024 host city next year. Los Angeles, Paris and Budapest, Hungary, are the other bidders.
Rome last hosted the Olympics in 1960. It lost out to Athens in the final voting round for the 2004 Games and was forced to withdraw its bid for the 2020 Olympics after the government of then-Italian prime minister Mario Monti declined to provide financial backing.
“We have the chance to show the world that Italy knows how to achieve its goals and is able, as happened with the 1960 Summer Olympics ... to host highly successful events in total transparency,” the statement added.
The candidacy is promoting a cost-conscious plan relying on many of the same venues used in 1960, such as the Foro Italico complex, featuring the athletics stadium, and aquatics and tennis arenas.
Montezemolo has announced a bid budget of 24.9 million euros (US$27 million) — significantly less than what main rivals Paris and Los Angeles are planning to spend.
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