This is the last phase of a very delicate mission for the organizing committee of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojo). The Cojo is launching its fourth and final wave of calls for tenders, while completing the third, to try to find companies likely to provide it with private security agents to ensure surveillance of the Games sites. A crucial issue, when the need is estimated at 17,000 professionals per day on average with peaks of 22,000, in a sector already lacking workers.
For the moment, 37 companies have already committed to Cojo for the summer of 2024, which represents around 6,000 agents contracted with this in mind. “We are in the transition times,” insisted this Thursday the director of security for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Bruno Le Ray. We are reasonably optimistic about our ability to achieve our objectives. Our ambition is to have identified at the very beginning of 2024 all the companies with which we will work. »
In detail, this final wave of calls for tenders brings together sixty lots, half of which concern the highly anticipated opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, the first to take place outside a stadium, scheduled on the Seine on the evening of July 26, 2024. The organizers currently estimate their needs at 2,000 agents to manage the lower part of the river quays, at their expense in terms of security. “It’s a peak in one evening, where we will have to take care of 6.5 kilometers of river banks on each bank,” underlines Bruno Le Ray, at the head of an area where Paris 2024 is investing 320 million euros. euros.
The army to fill the gaps
But this latest wave also brings together around fifteen lots which have not yet found buyers until now. And even once recorded, it is also necessary to anticipate the potential failures of the signatory companies. “The challenge is to transform these contracts into physical agents,” explains the security boss of Paris 2024. “We are making all possible efforts, and the justice of the peace will be the number of people we will be able to deploy in the summer of 2024. But we won’t wait until then to look at different scenarios. »
With the growing question of the extent of recourse to the army to fill the gaps in private security. In a report published in July, the Court of Auditors urged organizers and the State to agree on a plan, by October at the latest, to determine the number of soldiers to be requisitioned for the occasion. The Minister of Sports and Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, indicated that she wanted to take her time and postpone this decision until the beginning of 2024.
