14 pages to dissect an “inevitable fiasco”.
The Senate released its long-awaited report on Wednesday into the numerous incidents on the sidelines of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid on May 28.
The document, written by the presidents of the culture and law committees who conducted hearings from June 1, traces the course of the security management of the evening and lists a series of avenues to avoid a new failure similar to the 'coming.
While attacking officials, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and the prefect of police Didier Lallement in the lead.
Bad decisions made before D-Day
The May 28 fiasco began to unfold long before.
"If the three-month period made it possible to organize the event correctly, it did not allow the crisis scenarios to be sufficiently worked on", criticizes the text.
In their report, the elected officials of the Luxembourg Palace criticize several choices of the various organizers of the different facets of the evening.
With in the first place, the decisions of the police headquarters.
The text criticizes “undersized protection of property and people”, evoking the numerous acts of delinquency reported by Spanish and British supporters before and after the meeting.
“The presence of these offenders, although on an apparently unprecedented scale, was predictable, scathing senators François-Noël Buffet (LR) and Laurent Lafon (UDI).
In the days preceding the event, Stade de France staff and the mayor of Saint-Denis reported an unusual excitement around the match and the enclosure.
On the day of the match, 209 police officers were deployed around the Stade de France to fight crime.
Less than a week later, they were 650 for the Blues match against Denmark.
2,471 counterfeit tickets were identified at the Stade de France turnstiles on the evening of the Champions League final according to the FFF.
AFP/THOMAS COEX
Another point which targets the prefect of police Didier Lallement, who will leave his post in a week: the establishment of a pre-filtering system which, "as soon as it is combined with a check on the validity of tickets by the stewards, created a bottleneck in terms of access for spectators leaving the RER D".
It was in this sector, on a footbridge that runs along the A1 motorway, that between 10,000 and 15,000 people, mostly Reds fans, found themselves stranded before the lock jumped a little more. an hour before the theoretical kick-off of the match, postponed by more than half an hour.
Upstream, the police headquarters had also asked the French Football Federation on May 23 to dismantle the panels intended to redirect the crowd coming from the RER D access to that of the B, much less used that day due to of the strike on this line.
The police have also further reduced the size of this access by positioning vans "intended to obstruct ram cars".
Finally, the police headquarters did not seem "to have planned a means of evacuating the people who had been turned back and who could not move back because of the narrowness of the access".
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UEFA is also targeted from the first pages of the report.
The European body is criticized for its lack of implementation of a device to identify upstream the multiplication of counterfeit banknotes.
2,471 of these falsified sesames were identified at the turnstiles of the Stade de France that evening according to the FFF.
UEFA has also “unintentionally” participated in the blocking of pre-screening points by requiring checks on the validity of tickets in this sector.
Among the 15 recommendations of the report, the senators ask to make mandatory “the use of unforgeable notes”.
“Electronic tamper-proof tickets”, specified the elected (UDI) of Val-de-Marne Laurent Buffet.
A series of bad decisions on May 28
Caught at fault by the accumulation of supporters from the RER D, the organizers adapted much too late to this new situation.
The report points to the absence of alternative plans to organize a new orientation for spectators en route to the stadium and denounces "the lack of sufficient responsiveness" when the access point became congested.
“From the outset, and especially from 6:30 p.m., the significant difference in attendance between line D and line B was known, underline the senators.
However, this situation did not elicit any rapid reaction to reorient flows, either from the carriers, who indicated that they had not been asked to do so, or from the organizers, or even from the police headquarters, which implemented this reorientation only at 7:18 p.m., too late in practice to allow the pre-filtering system to be maintained.
This one completely gave up there about half an hour later.
Read also Incidents at the Stade de France: bottleneck, tear gas ... chronology of a chaotic evening
The police prefecture is also criticized for not having reacted quickly enough to reinforce the staff responsible for the fight against delinquency "despite multiple intrusions and thefts from midday on May 28".
The massive use of tear gas by the police to keep thousands of people away from the gates of the Stade de France once the forecourt was invaded "seemed particularly aggressive to supporters coming from countries where it (this method) is not not practiced.
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Gérald Darmanin implicated, President Emmanuel Macron called to react
The text exonerates the supporters of both camps, in part those of Liverpool, from all responsibility.
However, the latter had been designated as the main responsible for this fiasco by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and his counterpart for Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.
The two members of the government had put forward the figure of 30,000 to 40,000 Reds fans with fake or no tickets who came to the Stade de France.
An estimate largely dismantled since, while the tenant of Place Beauvau only recognized "his share of responsibility" at the end of June.
“This gradual and belated recognition contrasts with the desire to overwhelm Liverpool team supporters which characterized the first official statements,” the report said.
The public desire to make the presence of British supporters appear as the sole cause of the situation of chaos experienced by the Stade de France, with perhaps the desire to hide the poor organizational choices made, is in any case not cause not acceptable.
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Chaos at the Stade de France: return on a fiasco
"The recommendation is to tell the truth in an event of this nature", smiles François-Noël Buffet, who had pointed out at the beginning of the month the "bullshit" told by Gérald Darmanin.
He and Laurent Lafon have also called on the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne to take a position on this fiasco, which the two most important figures of the State have not yet done.
“Given the stake for France, it is necessary that the President or the Prime Minister speaks out”, underlines the elected representative of Val-de-Marne.
The latter also sees in this crisis “a warning shot for the preparation of the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games”, competitions which will take place partly within the enclosure of Saint-Denis.
Deletion of CCTV images again denounced
“What we will forever miss are the images”, regrets the president of the law commission, senator (LR) François-Noël Buffet.
The video recordings of the Stade de France, those of the RATP and part of the SNCF no longer exist, for lack of judicial requisition before their automatic deletion.
The senators see there “a manifest absence of will to shed light on responsibilities”.
The disappearance that irritates the elected officials the most is that of the images of the four cameras pointed outwards at the corners of the enclosure
“Neither the consortium (of the Stade de France), which should have had the presence of mind to question the judicial authorities within the reduced period of seven days that it set itself, nor the police headquarters, nor the Bobigny public prosecutor's office, have acted diligently to safeguard evidence essential to the manifestation of the truth".
The report also recommends extending, on a case-by-case basis, to one month, ie the maximum legal duration, the retention period for these images.
Today, only the records of the police headquarters, those of the city of Saint-Denis and part of those of the SNCF remain.
The two commissions did not have the authorization of justice to view these images.