Fury in France as Champions League final chaos tarnishes nation’s global image
As elections loom, public turns against interior
minister Gérald Darmanin after he blames Liverpool fans for Paris fiasco
Kim
Willsher in Paris
Sat 4 Jun
2022 12.00 EDT
When Paris
stepped in to host the Champions League final, the biggest match in
international football after the World Cup final, the French authorities saw a
chance to show that the nation was the ideal place to hold global sporting
events.
This
weekend, those hopes appear to be dashed as French opinion polls show
widespread disapproval of the chaos that ensued, amid growing criticism of
politicians and the police.
Unlike the
UK, which witnessed fan violence at last year’s delayed Euro 2020, or
autocratic states such as Russia and China, which respectively hosted the most
recent World Cup and Winter Olympics, France had been confident it would put on
a proper – safe – show.
With the
Rugby World Cup in France next year and the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, the
Champions League final – which Paris offered to host after Uefa realised the
Gazprom Arena in St Petersburg was no longer a suitable venue – would be the
perfect kick-off to two years of French organisational excellence.
What they
did not expect was a week of headlines about French police teargassing and
pepper-spraying children.
Seven days
on, the French authorities are under increasing pressure to fully investigate
what the nation’s press has described as “a fiasco”.
French
interior minister Gérald Darmanin has doubled down on his insistence that
Liverpool supporters brandishing up to 40,000 fake tickets were to blame,
sparking criticism at home and abroad.
Initial
inquiries suggest the number of counterfeit tickets scanned at the turnstiles
was less than 3,000, while fans have pointed out that even that may be an
exaggeration after many with valid tickets found the scanners did not accept
them.
With the
first round of legislative elections just a week away, the Élysée was hoping
the row would have blown over by now. But an opinion poll by Odoxa-Backbone
Consulting found that 76% of French people do not believe Darmanin’s version of
events at the Stade de France last weekend. Only 33% of those asked believed
Liverpool fans were to blame for the chaos and 53% said they were concerned
about the staging of the Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.
If the
French government had hoped the accusations of police violence could be denied
then quashed, it appears to have been caught on the back foot by the anger from
abroad and at home.
Faced with
video footage and statements from dozens of football fans present, Darmanin, 39,
who is on the right of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist governing party, was forced
to row back on his stance. Quizzed by the Sénat, the upper parliamentary house,
he admitted that “things could have been better organised … it’s clear that
this great sporting event was spoiled”.
With
reports that Macron was furious over what happened, Darmanin also apologised
“very sincerely” for what he called the “disproportionate use” of teargas,
which he said had caused “serious problems, notably for the children”.
Fabrice
Arfi of the investigations website Mediapart said it was astonishing that it
took pressure from Liverpool fans and the British media to make the minister
apologise.
“Darmanin
has been unable to recognise any police violence in the past. So we have got used
to this in France. The French have never had any apologies from him,” said
Arfi.
“Everyone
outside of France is shocked to see how the French police behaved, but it’s
nothing new for us.” However, last week Darmanin was still insisting that up to
40,000 English football fans turned up for the match either without a ticket or
with a false ticket, which he described as “massive, industrial and organised
fraud”.
Le Monde
described Darmanin’s mea culpa as “timid”, saying: “There was no change deep
down”.
Libération
published a picture of Darmanin with a Pinocchio-like nose. In an editorial,
the paper said the interior minister was sticking to a “fairytale that clears
the police” and said his excuses were feeble and “bordering on arrogance”.
“France
missed an opportunity to prove it still knows how to organise a world event
without problems: it now needs to prove it knows how to learn the lessons of
its failures.”
The chaos
was heightened by attacks on fans by local thugs who assaulted Liverpool and
Real Madrid supporters while the police appeared incapable of stopping them.
Sebastian
Roché, an expert on French policing from Sciences Po in Grenoble, suggested
that, unlike British police, the French force does not operate by public
consent.
“French
police are not expected to talk to the public. They are not trained to send
information up the line to their superiors to change plans according to
developments on the ground. They are poor at explaining to the public what they
are doing and why,” said Roché in Le Monde.
Events at
the Stade de France have thrown an international spotlight into a dark corner
of French policing: while outsiders are shocked, the French have become used to
police using teargas, pepper spray, water cannon and even “flash-ball” rubber
pellets to control crowds.
During the
gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protests, several people suffered catastrophic
injuries including the loss of eyes and hands. Even non-protesting bystanders
have been victims: Zineb Redouane, 80, was closing her shutters at her flat in
Marseille during a protest when she was hit by a teargas grenade travelling at
an estimated 60mph in December 2020. A subsequent report cleared the police of
wrongdoing.
In 2018, at
the height of the gilets jaunes demonstrations, Reporters Without Borders and
the National Union of Journalists complained of police targeting journalists at
protests despite them being easily identified as members of the press.
Afterwards,
Jacques de Maillard, a researcher specialising in police issues and the
director of the Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Penal Institutions,
told France 24, there were “structural problems in terms of recruitment,
training, philosophy and management” of the police force.
Arfi said
that French politicians had a problem facing up to police violence.
“Maintaining order in France is very political. The instinctive reaction of
politicians in France is not to respond but to deny and that denial creates a
sentiment of impunity,” he said.
“Darmanin and Macron are simply unable to recognise or accept there is such a thing as police violence. What will come of this now people outside of France have seen it, who knows.”
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