The French Senate is very clear that responsibility for incidents Champions League it was not from the fansas the government intended, but it was a chain of failures by the organizers and he wants the president, Emmanuel Macron, to draw all the consequences.
The two commissions of the upper house that have been working for three days after the May 28 meeting between Real Madrid and Liverpool in the incidents occurred around the Stade de France where it was disputed presented this Wednesday a report of conclusions which leaves the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, in a very bad position.
“I won’t say that he lied willfully, but his communication was biased and imprecise“, pointed out the president of the Culture Commission, Laurent Lafon, in relation to Darmanin’s statements on the night of the match and in the days that followed, in which attributed the incidents to several tens of thousands of English fans They tried to access Stade de France with fake tickets.
Lafon asked, on behalf of the chamber, his “excuses” to the fans for what happenedafter insisting that the false entries were not “the main cause” of what happened, and to illustrate it, he specified that, compared to the figures released by Darmanin, only 2,471 showed up at the gates with counterfeit bills.
The president of the Legislative Commission, François-Noël Buffet, repeated that Darmanin’s “first statements” “did not correspond to the reality of what happened”, although he pointed out that the information he had received from the prefect of police, Didier Lallement ( who will leave his post next week), were in that line.
France’s credibility at stake
Neither of them wanted to demand the resignation of the minister on the grounds that it is not their responsibility. What they did ask for is that Macron or his prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, come out of your silence on these facts and give your analysis and the consequences that they are going to draw, because it is at stake the international credibility of the country.
Especially considering the sporting challenges it faces in the short and medium term with the organization of the Rugby World Cup next year and, above all, the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.
In the report, voted unanimously, the senators of the two commissions insist that “there was a chain of rulings” that occurred “at all stages” that went from planning to execution and to that was added the “lack of coordination” between the various authorities responsible.
Among the main failures described is the management of the flows of spectators on a day when a commuter train workers’ strike and the lack of foresight led to a large part of the fans who went to the Stade de France being diverted to one of the two train lines that pass through there.
At the exit of the train station between 10,000 and 15,000 people gathered in a poorly dimensioned filtering control that, due to the risk of crushing, had to be raised, so that they could sneak to the esplanade next to the field with the fans between 300 and 400 criminals.
Under and over coping
The problem is that the Prefecture had only mobilized 209 agents to fight there against those criminals who attacked and robbed many aficionados when in a comparable event, the France-Denmark soccer friendly on June 2, there were 650 policemen.
Con such a fragile device that the threat of common criminals had not been considered sufficientlydespite the information that the Saint Denis City Council had, for example, where the Stade de France is located, when the security forces reacted – late, always according to the Senate – they did so by resorting to force.
The signatories of the report consider legitimate the use of tear gas to drive back hundreds of fans and prevent them from jumping on the fences that surround the field, because they did not do it at that time, when things had gotten out of hand to those responsible for security, “It would have undeniably had dramatic consequences”.
But in any case, they insist that “they are the direct consequence of failures to anticipate that were the cause of the incidents that shocked national and international public opinion and tarnished the image of France”.
