Olympic Games-2024: “No terrorist threat” specifically targeting the Paris Games, assures Amélie Oudéa-Castéra

Europe 1 with AFP 11:14 a.m., April 3, 2024

French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra assured Wednesday that there was to date "no terrorist threat" specifically targeting the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, and that the opening ceremony on the Seine remained " central plan" on which the organizers are working. “We are following the terrorist threat with all the necessary vigilance. There is no specific terrorist threat today against the JOP,” she said during a morning interview on France 2.

“This ceremony on the Seine remains our central plan”

The French government decided, immediately after the attack on March 22 against the concert hall near Moscow, where 144 people died, to raise the Vigipirate security plan to its maximum level, "emergency attack", four months from Games.

Asked once again about the existence or not of a plan B for the opening ceremony of July 26, the minister replied: "This ceremony on the Seine remains our central plan (...). I think that there is a work of discretion that must be respected. It is not because we do not talk about it, about a plan B, that we do not plan it."

The postponement of technical tests on the Seine, a “non-event”

Asked about the postponement of technical tests planned for April 8 on the Seine for the opening ceremony, the minister spoke of a “non-event”. “It’s a decision that was taken 3 or 4 weeks ago already, there were different dates that were possible, April 8, May 27. We canceled the date of April 8. The rehearsal will take place on May 27, and there will be a dress rehearsal, for once, on June 17,” she explained.

“We take into account the fact that there is a level of height of the Seine, of flood and also of currents which would have complicated the carrying out of this test,” she added.