Unless there is a last minute surprise, Laurent Nuñez must be appointed prefect of police in Paris on Wednesday July 20 at the Council of Ministers, according to information from BFM-TV, confirmed at Monde from a government source. This high official arrives in a house he already knows. Aged 58, who became national coordinator of intelligence and the fight against terrorism in July 2020, he had occupied for four years from 2012 to 2016, the post of director of the cabinet of the prefect Bernard Boucault on the island of the Cité.
He succeeds the controversial Didier Lallement in place since March 2019 with the mission of restoring the maintenance of order in the capital following the overflows during the demonstrations of the “yellow vests”. Mission during which, he showed an assumed rigor although often called into question. He should claim his retirement rights.
Laurent Nuñez, enarque native of Bourges, passed by the prefecture is a specialist in security and the fight against terrorism. His time at the sub-prefecture of Bayonne from 2010 to 2012 introduced him to counter-terrorism. Over the past ten years, he has held the highest positions in these sectors and acquired an expertise that no one disputes.
Restore a damaged image
Prefect of police for Bouches-du-Rhône in Marseille for two years from 2015 to 2017, he then devoted himself to the fight against drug trafficking and the settling of scores that poison the second city of France. He was then recalled to the capital to take the helm of the General Directorate of Internal Security from June 22, 2017 to October 16, 2018, on the front line in the fight against terrorism. This servant of the State left this post to join La République en Marche and enter the government as Secretary of State to the Minister of the Interior at the time, Christophe Castaner.
Laurent Nuñez knows perfectly the mysteries of the Prefecture of Police. A man of order, he is of a very different temperament from that of his predecessor. He will have to restore the damaged image of the old institution which has more than 40,000 civil servants including nearly 30,000 police officers. Two years from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, the new police chief will have to make people forget the fiasco of the Champions League final at the Stade de France in June. In this position, one of the most strategic in the senior civil service, he will probably have no great difficulty in improving relations between the Prefecture of police and the town hall of Paris, which have suffered from the tensions between Didier Lallement and Anne Hidalgo.