Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castera assured Monday morning that relocating the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, planned on the Seine to Paris next summer, was not “a hypothesis” currently being considered, despite the terrorist risk.

“We don’t have a plan B, we have a plan A in which there are several plans B,” she said on France Inter.

Two days after the attack on the Bir-Hakeim bridge in Paris, where an attacker registered for Islamist radicalization and known for psychiatric disorders killed a German tourist with a knife and injured two other people with a hammer, the Minister of Sports recalled that the “terrorist threat and in particular the Islamist threat exists”.

However, “it is not new and it is neither specific to France nor specific to the Games,” underlined the minister, who ensures that she is putting “everything in order to reduce it as much as possible with an absolute state of vigilance.”

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is due to take place at the end of July on the Seine, between the Pont d’Austerlitz and the Pont d’Iéna. Ms. Oudéa-Castera said there was no “plan B”.

“There are a certain number of adjustment variables,” she nevertheless clarified.

She cited in particular the number of spectators during this ceremony, which will be fixed in the spring, and which can be “modulated”.

These adjustments will also concern “the number of festivities which will be authorized around the area and in Paris” and “the management of security perimeters”.

Asked whether the relocation of the ceremony was part of the “second plans”, the minister declared: “this is not the hypothesis on which we are working”.

Faced with the concern caused by the attack on Saturday evening, near the Eiffel Tower, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra recalled that security measures would “be greatly enhanced during the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

“We undoubtedly have a very particular security challenge at the opening ceremony, we have known that since the first day,” she recalled, listing in particular the means planned: “Mine clearance teams, dog teams (…) we are equipped with all this.

“And there is also the whole system around the security perimeters (…) in particular this Silt perimeter (from the Internal Security and Fight against Terrorism Law, editor’s note), but also the so-called red and blue perimeters (concerning the traffic, editor’s note) which will make it possible to secure the area in depth,” she added.

“We have the capacity to secure this event,” she promises.