Biarritz (AFP)

Exhausting hourly amplitudes, unpaid hours and work overload: firefighters and police mobilized for the safety of the G7 take advantage of the projectors pointed at Biarritz to make their anger heard.

"We are at 46 suicides (police officers in France) since the beginning of the year, this is unheard of," said Christophe Labarthe, departmental secretary of the union Unit SG- Police FO.

"It's an accumulation of things: since 2012 and the Merah affair, we're always on the bridge, we've had the El Khomri law and the Nuit debout movement, the Marriage for All, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Bataclan, then Nice, the yellow vests Here, this summer, we had the Bayonne Festival, the Tour de France and, there, the G7 for which there was also a lot of official preparation trips. rinsed, "lists the unionist.

For the summit, and the counter-summit and the planned events, 13,200 police and gendarmes are deployed, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced Tuesday.

"We are 80% of the presence of the police force throughout France, we could not take a vacation," says Christophe Labarthe. "Currently, a police officer has a free weekend out of six and unpaid overtime is accumulating".

Unite Unites SGP-Police FO and Alliance have planned an "barbecue of anger" on the sidelines of the G7, Friday night, in a place still unknown.

Visiting Biarritz Tuesday, Christophe Castaner assured "understand their concerns". "I know their tensions but I also know that they are the result of overly permanent misunderstandings that are sometimes wrong leaders and opponents," he added.

- "Like dead leaves" -

Even exhaustion among the firefighters, who have been demanding for several weeks the passage to 12 hours of their 24-hour guards, paid 17. Due to lack of response, many went on sick leave.

"We are still understaffed and this week, on the eve of the G7, stops fall like dead leaves in autumn," says Laurent Lafargue, firefighter of Anglet and union delegate of the Autonomous Union of firefighters. "There is physical and psychological fatigue".

In the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, about 490 professional firefighters are on foot for the summit.

"The G7 arrives and we do not know how to do", blows the fireman unionist. Reinforcements have arrived, but only "for the security perimeters of Biarritz". "All the clashes that could happen, the events that could go wrong and the rest of the population in Anglet, Bayonne, Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Hendaye are covered by us", summarizes Laurent Lafargue.

Monday, the department's firefighters demonstrated in front of the town hall of Biarritz to signify their fed up.

But firefighters, under the authority of the departmental fire and rescue services managed by the county councils, are also dependent on departmental budgets. "In the department, for what we ask, there would be four million euros out of a total budget of 769 million, or 0.40% of the budget," says the shop steward. But the State and the Departmental are sending the ball "." In Gironde, they have gone to 12 hours since 2003! "Exclaims Laurent Lafargue disappointed.

"I have a simple principle: who pays decides, who directs decides," said Tuesday Christophe Castaner. It is the SDIS (Departmental Fire and Rescue Service) "who pay them, it is the departments and municipalities that pay them, so there is no question for me to decide on behalf of others who are perfectly legitimate, "said the minister who considers" perfectly legitimate "the claims of firefighters, he praised" the quality of the commitment ", despite the strike movement started at the beginning of the summer.

© 2019 AFP