“worrying deficit”. “Measures too late”… While it has already been several months since the ability of the organizers of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP) of 2024 – and the public authorities – to mobilize enough private security agents for the sites of future competitions has been questioned, the deputies draw , again, the alarm signal.
“Eighteen months before the Games, the private security sector is facing a worrying capacity deficit”insists the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Education in its report for opinion on the bill “relating to the Olympic and Paralympic Games and containing various other provisions”, published Friday, March 17. This bill will be examined in public session by the deputies from Monday, March 20.
The Organizing Committee for the Paris Olympic Games (Cojop) has not “secure to date only 4,500 [agents] according to Etienne Thobois », its Director General, notes the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Education, while recalling that “the Cojop would need 22,000 to 33,000 private security agents according to the Court of Auditors”. Mr. Thobois was auditioned by the deputies while the results of a call for tenders in the direction of private security companies were not yet fully known.
The government, which, for its part, estimates that it will be necessary to mobilize some 22,000 agents each day for the duration of the event, has nevertheless been operating, for several months now, various levers to reach this figure. But, for the Members of the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Education, the “measures aimed at increasing the attractiveness of the profession turned out to be too late for the industry to be able to provide the necessary personnel during the Games”. Under pressure from the government, security companies notably increased salaries on the 1is January by 7.5%, after + 3.5% in 2022.
“All the scenarios are on the table”
During his hearing by the deputies on 1is March, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, the Minister of Sports and the Olympics, had detailed the various actions taken to boost or support the necessary recruitments: call for people who have the title to practice this profession, but who no longer practice it ; implementation of a simplified event security title aimed at job seekers and students, with training reduced to 106 hours instead of the usual 175 hours.
Asked during the past week, the management of the Cojop did not wish to speak on the subject, referring to a communication in the coming days. A few weeks ago she had promised “maximum visibility by the first semester”.
The organizers however did not conceal that “all scenarios are on the table”. Translation: if private security cannot provide enough manpower, it may be necessary to call on the army.
“If at the end of the ends of the ends, a certain number of people are missing, we will see what we can do”had contented himself with answering, on January 24, Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, to the centrist senator Laurent Lafon, who asked him “when the scenario of recourse to the army will be[it] officially announced » to make up for a shortage of private security guards.
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