Premiership of Tony Blair which was an agreement to increase British contributions to the EU Development Budget for new member countries, which effectively reduced the UK rebate by 20% . On 6 July 2005, during the 117th International Olympic Committee (IOC) session in Singapore, the IOC announced that the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Games of the XXX Olympiad, were awarded to London over Paris by only four votes. The competition between Paris and London to host the Games had become increasingly heated particularly after French President Jacques Chirac commented three days before the vote that "one cannot trust people [ie: the British] whose cuisine
2010 Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Torino, then sang the Olympic Hymn, mixing English and French, while an RCMP honour guard lowered the Olympic flag. This flag was raised again in London on July 27, 2012 during the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics. The Olympic flag was handed off by Gregor Robertson, the mayor of Vancouver, to Jacques Rogge, the President of the IOC. It was then handed off to the mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, whose city will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. The flag arrived in Sochi at the end of March and was raised at that city's municipal building until