Securing the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games cost France at least 1.4 billion euros

The security of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP) of Paris 2024 had been a subject of strong questions – and tensions – before the summer event, given an international context raising fears of possible attacks, but also due to the desire of the management of Paris 2024, supported by the public authorities, to organize the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in the form of a nautical parade on the Seine. In the end, the event took place without any major problem, but it had a cost for the public authorities. And it is far from trivial.

The successive governments before and after the Olympic Games have never given a global and precise estimate of what the consequences of this “Olympic security insurance” could be for state finances. But various documents published in recent weeks, following the examination of the finance bill for 2025, reveal initial figures for this mobilization of police officers, gendarmes and soldiers. By adding them up, we arrive at a first estimate of 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion euros.

For comparison, the State spent 1.13 billion euros to support the construction of the Olympic-Paralympic sites and contributed 158 million euros to the budget of the Games Organizing Committee (Cojop).

For the army, which mobilized nearly 15,000 soldiers on average per day – or almost 20% of the land operational force – the cost of this participation, for example, has not yet been definitively decided. But the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces gave an assessment to the deputies of the Defense Committee. “General Thierry Burkhard indicated that the cost was of the order of 300 million to 400 million euros”details the deputy (Socialist Party) of Val-de-Marne Isabelle Santiago in her report on the “Preparation and employment of land forces” mission.

This amount is in addition to the 1.14 billion euros in expenses incurred by the Games for the police and gendarmerie who, between them, deployed an average of 35,000 people per day during the summer. The financial burden represented by securing the JOPs will have above all been assumed by the national police: the cost for the latter is estimated at 814 million euros, when it is estimated at 327 million for the gendarmerie. That of the participation of the air force (nearly 9,000 airmen mobilized in particular) is not known at this stage.

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