Poland is the latest country to join the ‘international coalition’ set up to provide security at the Olympic Games in France, starting July 26th.
“The Polish Armed Forces will join the international coalition established by France to support the preparations and security of the 2024 Summer Olympics,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on social media platform X on Thursday.
Poland will be sending “a task force … including dog handlers,” he added, “to undertake activities related to the detection of explosives and counteracting terrorist phenomena.”
The pledge, made on the same day France’s chief of defense staff Thierry Burkhard visited Warsaw, comes as France’s terror alert level is currently at its highest level in response to the terror attack in Moscow last Friday.
In anticipation of hosting the Olympics, and keeping in mind the image Paris wants to present to the world, its organizers have been accused of transferring migrants from the capital, where they are often living in makeshift camps, to—mostly rural— municipalities across France.
While such ‘clean-up’ operations may be advantageous to the Olympics organizers, local mayors, such as Orleans’ Serge Grouard, have been up in arms for months, saying that they have been wholly left in the dark about the relocation efforts.
Grouard complained about the unexpected arrival of up to 500 homeless migrants in his town of 100,000 people.
“It has been proved that every three weeks, a coach arrives in Orleans from Paris, with between 35-50 people on board,” he told La Republique du Centre, citing rumors this had been done to “clean the deck” in the capital ahead of the Olympics.
While each new arrival is offered three weeks in a hotel (naturally funded by the taxpayer), he is thereafter left to find accommodations by himself, Grouard explained.
As reported by France24, the state’s regional security office responded to the Orleans mayor’s complaint that the influx was “not linked to the organization of the Paris Olympics,” adding that Orleans was one of ten “temporary regional reception centers.”
Grouard found himself an ally (at least, in part) in Floriane Varierasin, deputy mayor of Strasbourg, who told AFP when asked about a regional facility for hosting migrants near her city, that they too hadn’t been consulted, “either about the creation [of reception centers] or about the people who will go there.”
“That’s where I agree with the mayor of Orleans, the rather opaque side of what is happening,” she added.
While Paris has been offered a fortuitous occasion to ease the burden of migrants on its own territory, the city’s unilateral approach is unlikely to win much affection from the (non-Parisian) French.