Security the main priority at 2024 Paris Olympics

Paris Olympic Games organisers have warned their Brisbane 2032 colleagues that security is ‘non-negotiable’ and needs to be their No. 1 priority.

Paris’s Seine River will be the site for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Picture: AFP

Paris Olympic Games organisers have warned their Brisbane 2032 colleagues that security is “non-negotiable” and needs to be their No. 1 priority.

Paris 2024 chief executive Tony Estanguet told The Australian this week in Birmingham that Games organisers started with a blank sheet of paper with the plan to make the French Games secure at the very top. He expects Brisbane organisers will have taken a similar approach.

When asked whether Brisbane 2032 should also look at ­security as being the prime requisite and begin preparing for its costs, Mr Estanguet said: “For us, it was a No. 1 issue from the beginning.’’

Just how much Brisbane will have to pay to make the Games secure will depend on multiple issues such as the perceived terror risks, the breakdown of costs between federal and state governments using military and state police and whether organisers will take on more specific areas of patrolling Games ven­ues and checking spectator bags.

Paris 2024 is paying for security at the sports venues using 70,000 private security guards at a cost of €350m ($574m) equating to around 10 per cent of the operating budget.

Mr Estanguet said: “From the beginning, we decided security will be at the top and we will build the excitement and celebration coming from a secure platform. So it’s non-negotiable.”

He said the security costs were minimal compared to the costs of running the various sports, which takes up around 90 per cent of the budget.

Paris has increased its operating budget by 10 per cent from when it won the Games back in 2017. Then they budgeted for €3.9bn; now it is €4.4bn.

Every year when the budgets are reassessed, the only line item that has increased without question has been the security figure.

“It’s something where you want to not hesitate with the system,’’ Mr Estanguet said.

He said the costs of 45,000 military and national police to secure the wider Paris area, and the areas along the Seine River for the ceremonies, are borne by the French government.

A secure perimeter will block cars from approaching the Olympic venue areas.

Officials have recently scaled back the number of free tickets for ceremony spectators from an initial concept of having several million people line the riverbank for the opening on July 26.

The current security alert is high, and that level is unlikely to drop before the Olympics, given France’s history of attacks from Islamic State and other ­extremists.

At a recent parliamentary hearing, Paris region security official Marc Guillaume confirmed there would be 104,000 paying spectators on the lower bank for the opening ceremony and 222,000 people on the higher banks who have been provided with free tickets.

An estimated 200,000 others will watch the ceremony from nearby riverside buildings and around 50,000 are anticipated to attend fanzones around Paris.

Nearly 200 boats, including 94 containing the Olympic athletes, will sail down the Seine for the ceremony.

Mr Estanguet said the security perimeter around the Seine would be “very large, and controlled over many days before the opening ceremony in order to completely secure the zone’.’