“We want to be able to control people who will have, even from home, a direct view of the Seine,” says the Paris police prefect.

Security will be particularly tight for the opening ceremony on July 26. “The big trouble will begin from July 1 to 15, with several Parisian bridges which will be closed to traffic,” indicates the police prefect.

Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez detailed, Wednesday March 6 on franceinfo, the security system put in place during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, with “two scenarios”there “security around Olympic venues” as “the Trocadéro, the Champ-de-Mars, the Invalides and Concorde” And “the opening ceremony”which will have an even greater security feature.

In the first case, around the Olympic sites, “there will be areas where we will only enter if we are going to attend a competition, and then around it, we have established motorized traffic perimeters”. In these “areas, quite limited, it will be necessary to obtain an exemption [pour y circuler]because we are local, because we work there, because we are doctors and we have to treat…”. This exemption will be available “on a digital platform” which will allow “to get a pass” to circulate there. He specifies that this only concerns motorized traffic, because “pedestrian traffic is completely free, like on a bicycle or scooter”.

“The big struggle will begin on July 1”

There is, however, a “special case, it is that of the opening ceremony”, scheduled for July 26. There, “the big trouble will begin from July 1 to 15, with several Parisian bridges which will be closed to traffic”but “we will maintain five bridges that we can continue to cross” in the center of Paris. Laurent Nuñez is reserved about the impact on the daily lives of Parisians: “We do everything we can to achieve this balance which allows us to continue to live as much as possible”he adds that “restaurants, shops remain open, we can go home, of course”.

On the purely security aspect, here too the opening ceremony requires a very specific system, with a 6 kilometer route, on the Seine, between Austerlitz and the Pont d’Iéna, with a finale at the Trocadéro. Hearing in the Senate on Tuesday, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, gave details of the security arrangements planned for the opening ceremony, revealing that nearly a million administrative investigations would be carried out for the security of Games. Of this million, a significant number concerns the opening ceremony since“we want to be able to control people who will have a direct view of the Seine, even from home”. This therefore concerns the 326,000 spectators of the ceremony, but also all local residents.

“It’s our responsibility, we must ensure that there is no risk of a terrorist attack”, affirms Laurent Nuñez, who is responsible for the very large number of necessary administrative investigations. This will also concern rentals of furnished tourist accommodation on Airbnb, since tourists “will be obliged to register on the digital platform to go to the apartment they have rented”.