Paris to celebrate New Year under high surveillance
France 24
France 24
Avi Davis
23 hrs ago
The traditional New Year’s Eve celebrations on the Champs-Elysées will be the first large assembly to be sanctioned in Paris since France’s state of emergency started in November.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of people gather on Paris’s Champs-Elysées to celebrate the “Réveillon,” as the French call December 31.
But after a year that started with the Charlie Hebdo attacks and ended with the November 13 shooting and bomb attacks that killed 130 people, it was unclear whether New Year celebrations in Paris would go ahead as usual. France has been under a state of emergency since November 13, and large-scale gatherings of any kind have been officially banned.
On December 20, the mayor of Paris, the interior ministry and the prefecture of police announced that celebrations on the Champs-Elysées would be authorised. There would also be a light-and-sound show at the Arc de Triomphe, though it would not be as long as last year’s. The planned fireworks show, however, was cancelled.
Celebrating, with security
“We decided to mark the coming of the new year with sobriety and remembrance,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told the weekly Journal du Dimanche. “We won’t let (the terror attacks) affect us.”
But security remains the top concern, and Paris Police Chief Michel Cadot had a slightly starker description for the New Year’s Eve festivities: “There won’t be a big show,” Cadot said.
The light-and-sound show at the Arc de Triomphe will start at 11:50pm and be cut to ten minutes, as opposed to last year’s 20. The main objective is to avoid large crowds gathering for too long. Large screens will transmit the spectacle, and while the Champs-Elysées will be closed to car traffic as usual, circulation will be restored sooner than in previous years.
“The terrorist threat has not disappeared,” Cadot told the Journal du Dimanche. “I've told the mayor that the risk is heightened for the period that is coming up.”
Additional police will also be dispatched during the celebrations.
Europe’s top New Year’s destination
Yet Paris remains one of the most popular destinations in Europe for New Year's Eve. On AirBnB alone, the French capital registered 45,000 bookings for the time period, according to the Internet booking website, making it the company's favoured European destination for the celebrations.
And despite the mayor’s call for sobriety, it’s clear that countless celebrations continue to be planned in Paris, on and off the Champs-Elysées.
Public transportation is free the night of December 31, and Internet users have been sharing maps of concerts and club events around the city, which can be accessed here.
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