More than 720 police officers will be deployed this year to ensure the security of the Festival of Lights, the major winter event in the city of Lyon, to face the terrorist threat.
With its dazzling light installations, this year’s Lyon Festival of Lights promises to offer something for everyone and is expected to attract around two million visitors.
And yet the festival takes place just weeks after the terrorist threat in France was raised to its highest level.
Juliette Bossart Trignat, delegated prefect for defense and security in the Rhône: “It is an event which takes place in a security context which is a little bit particular, with a high level of terrorist threat. As you know, we are in a Vigipirate emergency attack plan and therefore this must obviously encourage us to be as vigilant as possible.”
The first edition of the festival took place in 1989. The Festival of Lights was canceled in 2015 after the attacks and in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.
This year, the Festival of Lights is expected to take place as usual, with large parts of the city center closed to traffic.
To secure the event, more than 700 police officers will be deployed and soldiers will also patrol the area around the bridges spanning the Rhône and the Saône.
Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon: “The Festival of Lights is the only event for which an ORSEC plan is systematically triggered, so we are already at a maximum level of mobilization of all security and emergency forces.”
Following recent violence by some extremist groups, local authorities also banned a far-right march from taking place at the same time as the festival parade.
Nelson Bouard, director of public security for Rhône: “If there was violence committed or attempted to be committed around the event on the sidelines of the event by small groups who wanted to be violent, we would obviously intervene depending on the nature of the acts that would be committed. .”
“The security of the Festival of Lights has already been at a high level since 2016,” explains our special correspondent. The festival’s artistic director told Euronews he expected audiences to turn out in numbers, with hotels and restaurants already booked. And this year, expanding beyond the city center , the city hopes to reach an even wider population.”