Despite heightened security concerns following a deadly attack in the French capital over the weekend, the French government reaffirmed its commitment to hosting the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony on the River Seine.
Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera, speaking on French radio, emphasized that while the plan remains intact, adjustments could be made to ensure safety within the concept of the river flotilla. Media reports have highlighted significant apprehension within security forces regarding potential vulnerabilities during the ceremony.
The incident on Saturday involved a man, previously flagged as a radical Islamist with mental health issues, fatally stabbing a German tourist near the Eiffel Tower along the River Seine. Prosecutors are investigating the event as a suspected act of terrorism.
“There is no plan B, we have a plan A within which we have several alternatives,” the minister told France Inter radio.
She said the “terrorist threat and in particular the Islamist threat exists” but added, “it is not new and it is neither specific to France nor specific to the Games”.
But she added that there were “a certain number of adjustment variables”, notably the number of spectators who can attend which will be decided in the spring and can be “modulated”.
Also subject to adjustment could be “the number of events which will be authorized around the area and in Paris” on the sidelines of the ceremony and “the management of security perimeters”.
But when asked whether any relocation of the ceremony was being considered, she emphasized: “This is not the hypothesis on which we are working”.
For the first time in Olympics history, the opening ceremony is set to take place outside the main athletics stadium, with competitors and officials set to travel through Paris on a flotilla of more than 100 vessels.
The attacker chose the Eiffel Tower area more for its “symbolic” side than as an “Olympic site”, Emmanuel Gregoire, Paris’s first deputy mayor told France Info radio.
Recalling that the Rugby World Cup had been hosted this autumn in Paris and elsewhere in France without “any incident”, he said that it is not “the Olympics… that must be called into question”, but “how we anticipate the risks in treating these individuals.”
“I am sure that we will be able to prepare for these Olympics in a very satisfactory manner,” he added.
(AFP)
