Security
Updated 10/12/23 at 04:00
Amid the terrorist threat looming over France, the president of LR believes that “we need to think about a plan B, for example at the Stade de France, in a closed and secure location.”
Eric Ciotti is concerned about security for the 2024 Paris Olympics. The president of the Les Républicains party suggested on Saturday to forgo organizing the opening ceremony on the Seine.
“The attack on the Eiffel Tower has shown our immense vulnerabilities in terms of security. In this context, the scenario of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on the Seine seems to me to be very risky,” said the LR leader in an interview with Le Parisien posted online on Saturday night. “We need to think about a plan B, for example at the Stade de France, in a closed and secure location. I ask the government to have no taboos when it comes to the security of the French people,” he added.
“A backup plan” instead of a “plan B”
The organizers of the Games aspire to organize a grand opening ceremony on July 26 in Paris, during which athlete delegations will descend the Seine on barges in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators. The show is to be directed by the director Thomas Jolly.
The question of security during this opening ceremony was revived by the attack committed on December 2 near the Eiffel Tower by a radicalized Islamist who killed a German-Filipino tourist and injured two others.
As of December 4, Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra had assured that the relocation of this ceremony was not the government’s “working hypothesis.” “We don’t have a plan B, we have a plan A in which there are several backup plans,” she said, emphasizing the possibility of modulating the number of spectators who will be allowed to attend.
20 Minutes with AFP
