Whatever the merits of the case made by President Jacques Chirac and Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Singapore this morning, the French are convinced they want and need the 2012 Olympics more than anyone else does.

Above all, France needs the games to boost morale. A stagnant economy and the No vote in the May 29th referendum on the European constitutional treaty have left the country in a state of collective depression. Its citizens are pinning inordinate hopes on the Olympics. An opinion poll published this week showed that 87 per cent of the French want to host the games.

"It would be the last straw if we missed out on the Olympic Games!" said the front-page headline of France Soir newspaper on Monday. "Unemployment, low growth, Europe in a mess . . . The French really need good news," said the subtitle.

Arnaud Largardère is the billionaire industrialist and publishing magnate who has headed the Club des Entreprises that raised €31.5 million to promote Paris' candidacy. Winning the stiffest competition ever for the Olympic games would be "a kid's dream", Lagardère told Le Monde. "We can't continue sinking into moroseness. Remember the energy after the football World Cup in 1998; we need a positive signal."

France's 1998 victory added 15 percentage points to President Chirac's popularity and relaunched the economy for a time. Battered by the referendum and the recent Brussels summit, Chirac is the only head of state to travel to Singapore to defend his country's bid. He will be airborne, bound for the G8 summit in Scotland, when the results are announced today. If Paris wins, Chirac will arrive in Gleneagles as a victor, having chalked up one battle against his nemesis, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Largardère's businessmen's club commissioned a study from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on the economic effects of the Olympics. BCG predicts the games would create 60,000 new jobs in France, of which 45,000 would remain after events are over.

France's €7 billion investment would be more than compensated by at least €35 billion in economic spin-offs.

In arguing its case, Paris vaunted the Stade de France, built for the 1998 World Cup, and a public transport system that already provides 23 million daily trips in the Paris region. All Olympic sites would be easily accessible, 24 hours a day.

More than two-thirds of the €7 billion budget would be used to finance an Olympic village in the Batignolles neighbourhood of northern Paris, an aquatic centre, a cycling stadium and facilities for the handicapped. After the games, the Batignolles complex would become a low-income housing project.

Paris last staged the Olympics in 1924. The French capital lost the 1992 games to Barcelona and the 2008 games to Beijing. If Paris were to lose today, most commentators doubt the French would have any enthusiasm to try again for 2016.

The French team changed its strategy after the last disappointment in 2001. "From the outset, we knew we ran the risk of appearing arrogant, whatever we did," mayor Delanoë said. "This alleged 'arrogance' is a characteristic that is generally attributed to the French. So we had to show immense professionalism in putting together our dossier."

The French application - in English - runs to 646 pages, divided into three volumes and 17 themes. Its cover bears Paris' motto, chosen by the former Olympic skiing champion Jean-Claude Killy: l'Amour des Jeux - Love of the Games.

Because the application for the 2008 games was judged "too Franco-French", Paris deliberately internationalised its team, hiring six Australians, three Greeks, an American, a Briton and a Dutchman. To avoid giving the impression they were snobbish, members of the French team were told not to mention Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Frenchman who founded the modern Olympics.

Luc Besson, considered the most "international" of French directors, spent €6 million making the film that took up more than half of the hour-long presentation this morning. Besson wanted to use a Rolling Stones song as part of his soundtrack, but the British rock group wouldn't sell the rights because they didn't want to help Paris beat London.