The subject of the security of the Paris Olympics gives, behind the scenes, cold sweats to some. The private security sector, in particular, is struggling to respond in terms of staff.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned his troops with this watchword: everyone on deck during Paris-2024. “The Olympic Games in Paris are once a century. So once a century, there is a guy who is unlucky, who is Minister of the Interior and who has to organize the Olympic Games in Parishe began. And then, the opening ceremony outside a stadium is once every 3,500 years since it never existed. So, I tell the gendarmes, the police, the firefighters, the agents of the Ministry of the Interior: there will not be zero leave but there will be a need for more people between June, July and August.
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Little or no vacation, the sentence is dropped. The reservists were called to the rescue while 30,000 police and gendarmes will be mobilized every day on average, including 35,000 for the opening ceremony alone with the banks of the Seine to be secured, 600,000 spectators expected and dozens of chefs State. The maximum alert in terms of the risk of an attack, a disaster scenario has been studied in high places. Killer drones or a cyber attack on the organizing committee, or even hospitals in Île-de-France, are anticipated.
Reception agents, cleaners, guards called to the rescue
Law enforcement will also have to rely on private agents. Priority number 1 therefore currently: to recruit enough of them. But it’s a race against time that has begun because the mission is delicate. The sector is already in tension. There are more offers than candidates and with the games, 25,000 more agents need to be recruited. Hence a campaign launched in the Paris region. Pôle Emploi first addressed the 10,000 approved agents, but some changed jobs during the Covid crisis, preferring, for example, logistics activities. The recruitment campaign was therefore extended to the long-term unemployed in other sectors.
Nadine Crinier, director of Pôle Emploi in Île-de-France, is now targeting a pool of 100,000 people: “Some have already had activities that can come close to skills related to private security, she argues. Reception agents, people who have guarded buildings or cleaned industrial premises or tertiary offices and who are already used to the procedures and observation skills… We are going to offer them videos on these professions, why not immersions in companies and train all of these people”.
No risk of terrorist infiltration, says Laurent Nuñez
Recruitment at no load, sometimes accelerated training, 106 hours against 170 usually, with a security risk at a discount or worse, that a terrorist tries to be recruited… Impossible, assures the prefect of police of Paris Laurent Nuñez, which highlights upstream investigations and screening. “The regulatory system that governs the profession has continued to grow in strength, he defends, both on their professionalization with fairly high-level training and then also on the morality, understood in the broad sense, of the agents, who are obviously the subject, like the members of the internal security forces, of administrative investigations , so as to ensure that there is no security risk from this point of view. Of course we will see to that.”
The rules have also recently been tightened. In addition to a clean criminal record, a security guard must prove at least five years of legal presence on French soil.
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What if, despite this recruitment campaign, there were not enough security guards on D-Day? This is one of the fears of Florent Lecoq, negotiator for the security branch of the CGT. Himself an agent, he remembers the Euro 2016 football tournament organized in France. “At the start, there were a lot of private security employees who had signed up. But with the difference in salaries offered in catering, serving as a waiter or making sandwiches or reception, we quickly found ourselves with the head under water”, he says.
“When we see the constraints of security guards, night work, long-term work, the total absence of 13th months or bonuses, inevitably the hotel industry, reception, cleaning will sting us again .”
Florent Lecoq, security officer and CGT negotiatorat franceinfo
Faced with this risk, the profession has recently been increased and new salary negotiations are underway. But the sector is faced with another difficulty: only 15% female, it will be necessary to recruit in numbers for the pat-downs of women during screenings. It is however too early to evoke a crisis scenario, believes Laurent Nuñez. “There is no reason to think that a plan B should be launcheddeclares the prefect of police of Paris. The Cojo has issued a number of calls for tenders, the profession is making enormous efforts to be there. We are very confident that private security will be there for this major event for our country”.
Plan B, which is not named, is that of using the army, as for the London Olympics in 2012, for lack of private agents. The military, security extras… The scenario is well considered but not settled for the moment.
