222,000 people. This is the number of people who will be able to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games for free, Gérald Darmanin revealed this Tuesday. But then, how to be part of it?
Heard this Tuesday, March 5 afternoon before the Senate Law Committee, the Minister of the Interior made an announcement which quickly intrigued people dreaming of experiencing the Paris Olympic Games as close as possible to the event! Gérald Darmanin has in fact revealed that of the 326,000 spectators who will ultimately be accepted to attend the opening ceremony which will be held on the Seine on the evening of Friday July 26 – against all the same 600,000 hoped for by the organizers -, 222,000 will attend the event free of charge thanks to an invitation sent to them.
If these privileged spectators will only be able to see the nautical parade on the Seine “only” from the upper part of the quays, the lower part being reserved for people with a paying ticket, the fact remains that the “invitation” aspect “clearly limits the accessibility of these places to the general public. As for who could be invited, the Minister of the Interior specified that the choice would be made by “trusted third parties” and that the authorities would subsequently validate these guests.
Concretely, the State, the Region, the departments and other cities of Île-de-France hosting the 2024 Olympic Games or even the organizing committee of the Games will be able to invite certain people, according to their own criteria, to the opening ceremony . The identities of the people invited will then be scrutinized. The Parisian specifies that if information determines that a guest could represent a risk to the security of the ceremony, their invitation will not be validated. Likewise, due to lack of available places, certain guests from the lists presented may also be excluded.