An intervention which takes place four months before the start of the tests. A camp where several hundred Romanian and Bulgarian people lived, near the Matmut Atlantique stadium in Bordeaux, site of the Paris Olympic Games, was emptied of its occupants before its dismantling this Thursday, announced the prefecture and a support association.
“All the occupants having been previously informed of the evacuation date, the interdepartmental management of the national police noted this morning a site free of any illegal occupation,” wrote the Gironde prefecture in a press release.
In execution of the eviction order issued on November 28, 2023 by the Bordeaux judicial court, the assistance of the public force was granted today by the prefect of #Gironde for the evacuation of a squat in Bordeaux Lac .
Find out ➕: https://t.co/lyFvEeR1bq pic.twitter.com/P5RZEa0dJB
— Prefect of New Aquitaine and Gironde (@PrefAquitaine33) March 28, 2024
The families concerned “have found another place”, confirmed Leonard Velicu, of the Bordeaux association Eurrom, which aims to promote the integration of members of the Roma community. Around 5:30 a.m., the camp located around 200 m from the stadium was deserted, noted an AFP photographer.
450 to 500 people on site, according to an association
Only a few empty shelters and wrecked vehicles were visible. Around 6:30 a.m., city workers arrived to clean up the area with an excavator and a dumpster, while law enforcement inspected the empty camp. According to Eurorom, 450 to 500 people, including around a hundred children, lived on this land. The authorities, for their part, mentioned “nearly 200 people of Romanian and Bulgarian nationality”, installed since November 2023.
The prefecture assured that it had carried out a “preliminary social diagnosis” for this evacuation, carried out in execution of a court decision obtained by the owner of the land, the insurer Gan (Groupama). “It’s linked to the Olympic Games, that’s for sure,” said Leonard Velicu.
Between July 24 and August 2, seven matches from the men's and women's Olympic football tournaments are scheduled in Bordeaux for the Paris Games, including a men's quarter-final. Justin Babilotte, chief of staff of the prefect of Gironde, recognized that the proximity of an Olympic site made evacuation “necessary” in order to “secure” the place.
“Preparing for the Olympic Games requires us to have a high level of security. And to do this, there are a certain number of perimeters (…) established around the Matmut stadium,” he explained. “It is within the framework of this security perimeter that we are intervening on this site today. »
“Social cleansing”
Eurom is now asking for permanent land to accommodate these families, displaced several times in recent months. “There are a lot of lands classified as Temporary Integration Spaces (ETI) which are open, financed by the town hall and the metropolis, but most are not occupied” due to lack of proximity to transport networks, explains Leonard Velicu.
For several months, associations have denounced a “social cleansing” in Paris and the Île-de-France region, gradually emptied, according to them, of its most precarious populations living on the streets, in view of the Olympic Games. The authorities, for their part, claim that 120,000 people are accommodated each night under the emergency in the Paris region.