A QR code will be mandatory to travel around Paris, near the Olympic sites, this summer before and during the 2024 Olympics. The objective is to avoid the presence of “dangerous” people.
It will have “nothing to do with the Covid QR code”, assured Paris prefect Laurent Nuñez, on France Info. This Friday, May 10, the Paris Police Prefecture opened an online platform on which it will be possible, from Monday, May 13, to request a special QR code for the Olympic Games. This will be necessary to travel in certain areas of the capital this summer, around the Olympic sites or the Seine for example. The scope within which the QR code will be mandatory will change depending on the dates. It is during the week preceding the Olympic Games and until the opening ceremony that the area will be the most extensive: it will run along the Seine, from the Trocadéro to the Porte de Bercy via the Louvre, the garden of Tuileries or even the Île de la Cité. At this time the perimeter will be non-motorized.
But who will be affected by this QR code? All those who want to go to the area where it will be obligatory: Parisians, traders, those who live on barges but also tourists and customers of restaurants or hotels. Once the opening ceremony has passed, certain motorized vehicles will also have the right to move within this area using this QR code: the cars of local residents who park in the area, the police, firefighters or emergency workers, or again the funeral directors.
Without a QR code, it will still be possible to cross the Seine via one of the five open bridges. “There will be four crossing bridges open to automobile traffic: Notre-Dame, Sully, Iéna and Invalides, plus a pedestrian bridge, the Léopold-Sédar Senghor footbridge. Five bridges, therefore, which will allow crossing the anti-terrorist perimeter,” said detailed Gérald Darmanin at the Parisien. The Ministry of the Interior will also set up a leafleting campaign to help people who do not have a smartphone or who are in a situation of illiteracy. “The police will make discernment: if a 95-year-old gentleman arrives with his identity document, we will do the work with him,” said Gérald Darmanin.
Why create this QR code? The objective is to ensure “that no dangerous person can access the security perimeters” explained Gérald Darmanin. The hypothesis of an attack or a terrorist attack targeting the Olympic Games has not been ruled out and the zone in which the QR code will be compulsory will correspond to the “internal security and fight against terrorism” zone.
You will therefore have to provide several pieces of information to receive a QR code such as your name, first name, address, date of birth. Once the request is completed on the platform, you will have to wait several days to obtain your pass due to administrative investigations. Registration will begin Monday, May 13. The prefect of Paris firmly denies the idea circulating “on conspiracy sites, which says that we will not be able to walk in Paris without a QR code” during the Games. “It’s false,” he said on France Info on Friday May 10. “People’s economic lives and personal lives will be able to continue to function” before and during the Olympics.
