The mayor of Nîmes, Jean-Paul Fournier, is happy that the Feria celebrations are early this year (from May 16 to 20, for the first part). He told local media Objectif Gard on April 15: "Cancelling the feria, with a million people over five days, would have had consequences for our economic fabric."

However, it's a different story for the Nîmes Festival concerts, which will take place in July at the city's famous Arènes. Because of the Paris Olympic Games, "almost 40% of the Nîmes police force had to be called out," said the official in the same interview. The figure was immediately disputed by the Gard prefecture which claimed that "on average, 15% of the total departmental workforce" and only up to "18%" of Nîmes police officers could be called away between July 22 and 25.

Fournier is not the only concerned mayor. Many mayors fear that their police forces will be "sucked into" the security measures to be deployed in the capital. It's particularly true for the coastal towns expecting summer tourists. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin had warned in autumn 2022 that "there will be no beach CRS [French riot police assigned to patrol beaches]" in the year of the Games.

Similar concerns exist elsewhere in France. When he read in the press that "50% of the police force will be absent from the city" during the summer, the mayor of Limoges, Emile Roger Lombertie, felt his blood boil. He wrote to Darmanin on April 9. Lombertie criticized "Dear Gérald's" administration for treating elected officials with such "contempt," noting that they had not been informed or prepared.

He asked: "What are we supposed to do in the event of problems like those we experienced last summer [during the urban riots of June 2023], when no police forces will be available? Are we to accept exasperated citizens, bothered day and night, taking the law into their own hands?" he wrote, asserting that, in such circumstances, he would feel "obliged to stand alongside the threatened population to defend their safety."

The mayor of Limoges pointed out that his city is home to "nine priority neighborhoods, which exploded last summer 2023." "If we don't have enough national police officers," explained Lombertie, "we'll rely on municipal police officers. But they don't have the same skills."

The interior minister's entourage considers these reactions to be miscalculations on the part of local officials, explaining that the policy in place is one of "zero vacation" for police forces. Unlike a typical summer, officers will be "100% on duty." Thus, Darmanin's office assured, even if some are called up for security duties at the Olympics, "there will be more or as many police officers and gendarmes in the départements as in normal times." And to take the Gard region as an example, the 15% reduction applies to staff without vacations: "So, it will be more than a normal summer."

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