“I have always been in favor of very harsh, very severe penalties, administratively and penally.“for supporters who are perpetrators of violence or even for those who go to the lawns, claims the former divisional commissioner in charge of security in the stadiums between 2006 and 2010 from the Ministry of the Interior Michel Lepoix, this Sunday on franceinfo, then that the Disciplinary Commission of the French Football Federation meet urgently at the beginning of next week about the incidents of Friday evening at the Charléty stadium, in the Coupe de France Paris FC-Lyon match.
franceinfo: Who is responsible for these incidents?
Michel Lepoix: As in all these incidents, there is inevitably a division of responsibilities. No one is all white or all black. From experience, we will always look for unique responsibilities but, unfortunately, it is more a question of sociology than of security. There is very rarely a single responsibility, either for the stadium, or the supporters, or the police, or the stewards… There is almost always a set of responsibilities. On the sociological level, it must be admitted that this ultra movement, which borders on hooliganism for some, has always been extremely difficult to define, despite the very important work done by sociologists like Patrick Mignon and Nicolas Hourcade. We know the people but you are not an ultra every day of the week, 24 hours a day. In the behavior of the ultras, in the associations, they can be well supervised and then, at a given moment, there is a slippage which is linked to circumstances which are sometimes very specific, which are internal. It is always extremely difficult to find responsibilities and to have real leaders in these movements.
Was security in the stadiums a political priority at the time when you were in charge of this subject in the Ministry of the Interior?
It was a priority file, which had been taken in charge directly by Nicolas Sarkozy who was Minister of the Interior. He was following the file very directly. We had succeeded in setting up a whole system, in particular the administrative bans on stadiums which did not exist before, and after four years that the situation was settled favorably, we had the Julien Quemener affair, the supporter killed by a policeman at the Porte de Saint-Cloud in 2006. Despite all our efforts, there was a tragic affair that ruined everything, and it often is.
Should we toughen the penalties for violent supporters?
I have always been in favor of very harsh, very severe sanctions, administratively and penally, like what the English did when they were subjected to this problem. They succeeded in eradicating hooliganism in the big meetings and the equivalents of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. After, in the lower levels, this is not completely the case. In any case, the measures taken were drastic. Me, I have always been in favor of exceptional legislation – but in France we have a lot of trouble with legislation that would be exceptional, because of our history – for a given period, until things calm down, with special penalties, fines which are very high from the first infringements. Entering a lawn in England, at the time when I had these functions, was, from the first time, the equivalent of 4,000 or 5,000 euros in fines, so that makes you think. And you have to target. The procedures must be applied to those – but most of the time it is boys – who are the perpetrators and not to amalgamate the whole.