Will Gérald Darmanin succeed in extinguishing the controversy he sparked on Tuesday, October 25 in the Senate? While referring to the massive mobilization of police and gendarmes during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (from July 26 to August 11, 2024), the Minister of the Interior warned that cultural or sporting events should be “cancelled or postponed”, like the Tour de France or the Braderie de Lille. Asked about the concern that these remarks could raise among professionals in these sectors, Gérald Darmanin called, Thursday on France inter, “everyone to make an effort”.
>> Postponement or cancellation of major events during the 2024 Olympics: “A shock and amazement”, reacts the director of the Vieilles Charrues
“Me, I will cancel the holidays of the police and gendarmes between June and September” 2024, he specifies for his part, while ensuring that “that doesn’t mean that festivals can’t be held”that means that if they stand, they will have to stand “under conditions that allow for fewer security forces than usual”. The Minister of the Interior recalls, however, that “it is not up to him or the prefects to cancel this or that event”. According to him, it is up to events to adapt, and to the Ministers of Culture and Sports to “work with the organizers” and cities. The Tour de France has “agreed to postpone his departure by a few days”, he cites as an example.
“The Olympics in Paris are once a century, the opening ceremony on the Seine is once every 3,000 years, so yes it requires 45,000 police and gendarmes a day for three months.”
Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interiorat France Inter
“All the units of mobile forces, CRS and mobile gendarmes will therefore be taken by the Olympic Games”recognizes Gérald Darmanin, unequivocally on the fact that this will be the priority of the moment, “with the terrorist crisis and the difficulties of public order that we are experiencing”. “To have between 600,000 and 700,000 people in Paris for the opening ceremony, to have hundreds of thousands of people every day in the streets of Paris, Marseille, Lyon, so that there is zero crime, that requires the hyper presence of police and gendarmes”insists Gérald Darmanin, whose objective is to “do not reproduce” the Stade de France fiasco last June during the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Liverpool.
.@GDarmanin on the mobilization of the police for the 2024 Olympics, to the detriment of other events: “Having hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, so as not to reproduce what we did at the Stade de France, that requires a hyper presence #le7930inter pic.twitter.com/gnBOA3dC2U
– France Inter (@franceinter) October 27, 2022
The evocation of the postponement or cancellation of cultural and sporting events by Gérald Darmanin aroused the “shock and amazement” by Jérôme Tréhorel, general director of the Les Vieilles Charrues festival and guest of franceinfo this Thursday. This event is traditionally held in July.