Social media users have been publishing footage of the insects crawling around in high-speed trains and the Paris metro, alongside a rash of online articles about bedbugs in cinemas and even at Charles de Gaulle airport.
“The state urgently needs to put an action plan in place against this scourge as France is preparing to welcome the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2024,” the capital’s deputy mayor, Emmanuel Gregoire, said in a letter to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne this week.
France is preparing to welcome the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2024. Source: AAP / John Leicester/AP
Transport Minister Clement Beaune said he will discuss the issue with transport operators next week.
At the Paris Gare de Lyon train station, travellers said they doubted whether authorities would be able to get on top of the problem.
“It stressed me out. I had to take the train and I wondered whether I would find bedbugs. But then again, one can find them in cinemas and just about everywhere,” she said.
“People can really get depressed, even paranoid over it.” Deputy Mayor Gregoire called on insurers to include bedbug cover in house insurance policies, as low-income people rarely had the means to call in pest control firms.
