Calling on the Alliance and Unsa-Police unions, many police officers are demonstrating this Thursday, January 18, 2024, to demand compensation for their mobilization during the Olympic Games.
The 2024 Summer Olympic Games will be celebrated from July 26 to August 11, 2024 in Paris and several cities in France. This planetary sporting event will attract 10,500 Olympic athletes and 4,350 Paralympic athletes taking part in 878 events in 54 sports. 72 host communities, over 40,000 volunteers mobilized, nearly 13 million tickets on sale. The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games are a large-scale sporting event. The opening ceremony is also a security challenge. For the first time, it will take place outside a stadium. 600,000 spectators will be able to watch the parade, which will take place over six kilometers along the Seine. To guarantee safety, all police officers in France are mobilized during this period.
No Games without police officers
In concrete terms, this means that for three weeks, from July 26 to August 11, and also from August 28 to September 8, the duration of the Paralympic Games, police officers will be deprived of family vacations, and will have to find childcare during the school vacations.
They did, of course, meet with Minister Gérald Darmanin, to get answers to their many questions: Who’s going to Paris or elsewhere? How are we going to find accommodation in the capital? “It’s now, six months before the opening of the Games, that all this needs to be organized,” assert the Alliance and Unsa-Police union representatives.
But they had no real answers.
The Ministry of the Interior has announced an overall budget of €500 million, which will pay out between €500 and €1,000 to each police officer, as well as two extra weeks’ leave (in June or September) as compensation. But this seems too little for the unions, who are calling for a €2,000 bonus and a childcare scheme.
Mathieu Weber, Unsa-Police Moselle departmental delegate
- Police unions such as UNSA-Police (a majority union), for which you are departmental delegate in Moselle, are calling for a “Black Thursday” across France. What are the reasons for this outburst of anger?
It’s not a case of anger, but of real anger about the organization of the Paris Olympics. In fact, the Games have been planned for a long time and, as far as the police are concerned, we have no information on the practical details… Who will be leaving? How long will it take? Where will we stay? Where will we eat? What will be the accompanying measures, particularly as regards the care of our children? We don’t know a thing!
- The union representatives were received by their supervisory minister, Gérald Darmanin, who made some proposals. Aren’t they enough?
We’ve had no clear answer from our minister, nor any commitment, and that’s our problem. My colleagues are not against the Olympic Games, they just want time to get organized.
- What are your demands and how far are you prepared to go to get them? We want to know the rules of the game before the game starts. As I said, the compensatory bonus is not the only issue. We’ll keep up the pressure on the administration until we get a satisfactory answer.