“It is obvious that this celebration of sport has been ruined and that we regret the sometimes unacceptable excesses that have taken place.” It is with a mini-pokey mea culpa that Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, began his long speech during his hearing by the Senate this Wednesday, with the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, after the Stade de France fiasco.
“Things could have been better organized” during the Champions League final, marred by numerous incidents at the Stade de France on Saturday, acknowledged the Minister of the Interior, nevertheless qualifying this slight setback in his defense by recalling that this is the event “who has mobilized the most police and gendarmes since[il est] Minister of the Interior”. Rejecting any criticism of the number of police forces present: “There were more than enough police personnel.”
British and Spanish citizens will be able to lodge a complaint in their country
Faced with strong criticism, Gérald Darmanin then unfolded the events, using small explanatory panels, and reaffirmed that “110,000 people” introduced themselves “around the Stade de France”. The flow of users was 3.5 times greater in the RER D than the “normal”, explained the minister, taking as a comparison the last Coupe de France final. According to the Minister, two types of fraud took place: tickets were sold at 50 pounds to people who knew they were fake, while others bought tickets between 800 and 1,200 euros on fake sites, thinking they were real.
Going into great detail, Gérald Darmanin described how, according to reports from the Prefecture of Police, “half of the tickets were fake” on the RER D side, how the gathering of thousands of supporters without tickets or with fakes led to the lifting of a pre-filtering barrier “in order to avoid human tragedies which have unfortunately already happened in the history of football and crowds”. How, finally, a majority of police personnel were then moved to the Stade de France enclosure in order to prevent “the grids of giving way”, but at the same time leaving room for “acts of delinquency” around the RER D now free of any police presence. The “British and Spanish citizens will be able to file a complaint in their country from Monday”has also announced Gérald Darmanin.
Towards “different rules” regarding the use of tear gas
“Two referrals from the IGPN”the police force, have also been carried out, the minister also indicated. “There were inappropriate and disproportionate gestures on the part of police officers or mobile gendarmes”he conceded. “I personally saw two facts, where obviously public order and the use of tear gas were contrary to the rules of employment”he said again, specifying that he had “asked the prefect of police for sanctions for these two law enforcement officials”.
Gérald Darmanin also says he is considering “different rules” for sporting events “exceptional”. The police “used means of dispersal, are these means adequate for an event like this? Obviously the experience deserves to be widely reviewed and I asked the prefect Cadot to see in the context of exceptional sporting events that we can have different rules of employment “he said before the Senate Law Commission.
Earlier in the day, the new government spokesperson, Olivia Grégoire, had assured at the end of the Council of Ministers that “the President of the Republic did not even need to remind that he fully supported his Minister of the Interior”.
Update at 6:30 p.m.: addition of clarifications and the track of the “different rules” evoked concerning the use of tear gas.