En this era when the word of politicians is often regarded with suspicion, the fact that they accept their mistakes and learn from them appears, more than ever, to be a democratic requirement of prime importance. The silence observed by the Minister of the Interior after the publication, on Tuesday 14 February, of the damning conclusions of the report commissioned by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) on the chaos of the Champions League final on 28 May 2022, at the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), is, as such, worrying.
By mounting a massive production of counterfeit banknotes of which there is no trace, “the ministers, the Prefecture of Police, UEFA and the FFF [Fédération française de football] acted irresponsibly” in order to “exempt from responsibility for failures”, deliver the document. The account of the ordeal endured by thousands of British and Spanish supporters, reconstituted by the independent group of lawyers, academics and representatives of supporters’ associations brought together by UEFA, is terrible: these spectators, peaceful, simply coming to watch a great match, were repeatedly threatened with running over, assaulted by gangs of delinquents and sprayed with gas by the police.
Each time, the device put in place by the police is called into question: filtering on a narrow lane increasing the risk of trampling, absence of police officers during the multiple attacks around the stadium, closing of the doors, which takes trapped supporters, disproportionate use of pepper spray and “potentially lethal”. All of these blunders are based on an erroneous analysis of the context: to the denial of the systematic violence committed by gangs of delinquents against foreign supporters was added the fantasy of a “ hooligan threat” erected as the main risk.
Absence of unjustifiable sanction
Death “failures that almost led to disaster”, the prefect of police at the time, Didier Lallement, and the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, are not the only ones responsible. UEFA, “As the owner of the event, [en] bears the primary responsibility”concludes the report, which also insists on the accelerated preparation of the final initially scheduled in Saint Petersburg and relocated to Saint-Denis after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
But the absence of sanction against a prefect of police who had in no way taken into account the prescient criticisms of the Federation of European Supporters of his security arrangements and left his post two months after the fiasco, with “the pride of accomplishment”, is unjustifiable. As well as the deafening silence of Mr. Darmanin, who never explained his lies about the manufacture “massive and industrial” counterfeit tickets and found nothing to say about the UEFA report.
With the approach of the Rugby World Cup, hosted by France at the end of the year, and the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, it is urgent to review the management of policing of major sporting events. The change from the “Lallement method” observed in the demonstrations against the pension reform shows that this is possible. It is up to the Minister of the Interior to publicly draw lessons from the chaos of Saint-Denis, which has tarnished the image of the country, and to explain his method, so that such events do not happen again.