Nearly 15,000 soldiers will be mobilized for the Paris Olympic Games in the summer of 2024 (July 26-August 11), of which 10,000 will be deployed in Ile-de-France, the military governor of Paris, General Christophe Abad, announced on Thursday.
“The armies, at this stage, 250 days before the deadline, are preparing to commit around 15,000 soldiers at the national level, of which nearly 10,000 will be deployed in Ile-de-France,” he said. said during a press briefing at the Ministry of the Armed Forces. Some 5,000 of them will be housed in tents in the heart of Paris, on the Reuilly lawn, for the duration of the Olympic Games.
These announced numbers do not take into account a possible failure on the side of private security, a sector of activity whose difficulties make the Organizing Committee (Cojo) and the State fear not being able to bring together enough private agents.
“These numbers respond to the capacity of the armies to satisfy” the needs “as they have been expressed to us at this stage”, specified Christophe Abad. “This does not mean that in the next 250 days there will not be other missions, private security problem or not,” he added. For the sole security of competition sites, which is the responsibility of Cojo, between 17,000 and 22,000 security agents are needed.
Beware of failures on the private security side
Bruno Le Ray, director of Olympic security for the organizing committee, assured Thursday morning that 37 private security companies had already been selected, for 138 lots out of the 200 that the Cojo will award. “We are very much on schedule,” he said.
A fourth wave has just been launched, notably on the markets to secure the opening ceremony on July 26 on the Seine, a “complicated issue” for which the calls have been redivided into smaller batches. Of the volume of agents required, the Cojo manages half directly, the other half being managed by the sites to which it has subcontracted (like tennis at Roland-Garros for example). He already has “6,000,” said Mr. Le Ray.
The State, guarantor of security around the sites and on public roads, has always explained that it was waiting for the end of the private security tenders in order to be able to calibrate a possible use of the army. The Minister of Sports and the Olympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, recently referred to “early 2024” on the subject. The military governor of Paris spoke to him on Thursday of “the horizon at the end of January 2024”.