“Michael Cadot? It is essential. Without him…”. The various actors in the organization of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (JOP) are unanimous: the interministerial delegate for the Games (Dijop) is the central link in the preparation of the summer 2024 event.
It is so essential that an article of the bill relating to the JOP, which will be debated by the Senate from Tuesday, January 24, is also devoted to it. Certainly not by name. But article 15 of this text, which establishes the possibility of continuing to serve “until December 31, 2024” of the “civil servants occupying a superior position leading them to participate directly in the organization” of the JOP, concerns him directly.
If not exclusively, as Senator (Les Républicains) Agnès Canayer notes in her report on the bill, written on behalf of the Senate Law Commission:
“No official other than Dijop has been identified at this stage as being likely to be affected by this measure. »
Michel Cadot, who was appointed Dijop in July 2020 in place of Jean Castex, has already been kept in office for the first time: a decree, end of 2021extended him to his post for two years, until December 22, 2023. That is to say after the Rugby World Cup, which will take place in France.
This extension had been made necessary because the former prefect (of the Ile-de-France region, Paris, Ille-et-Vilaine, etc.) had reached the age of 67, an age at which a State official cannot theoretically be kept in operation. Except for exceptions. Among these are the “senior jobs”, for which appointments are left to the decision of the government. Interministerial delegates are part of it.
In this case, the general code of the public service allows for retention in office on an exceptional basis for a maximum period of two years. This same code also authorizes, since 2016, an additional one-year extension for civil servants “directly participating in the defense of the fundamental interests of the nation”, when the appointing authority deems it necessary to ensure the continuity of State action, recalls Agnès Canayer in her report. It is this scenario that applies to Michel Cadot.
“Risk of destabilization of governance”
“According to the government, his departure would pose a risk of destabilizing the governance implemented by the State in the organization of the Games”explains Agnès Canayer, who says she regrets that the succession of Michel Cadot “has not been anticipated sufficiently in advance and that a tiling with his successor has not been put in place to allow the latter to gradually become aware of the issues and the complexity of the organization of such an event ».
All in “regretting that legislative action is necessary to settle a particular case”, the senators adopted the article, in committee. They added an amendment to it to specify that this extension “can only be decided in the interest of the service and with the agreement of the official concerned”.
Keeping Michel Cadot in office until after the end of the JOP will not concern his other mission: that of interministerial delegate for major sporting events (Diges), a position he has also held since July 2020. A distinction hailed by senators: “it was a recommendation of the report of the law commission and the culture commission on the incidents that occurred at the Stade de France on May 28, 2022”, recalls Agnès Canayer.
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In this report on the dysfunctions which occurred during the final of the Football Champions League, François-Noël Buffet and Laurent Laffon, the presidents of these two commissions, had considered that it was appropriate “to make Diges the operational manager of the organization of major international sporting events, outside the JOP, and to recognize a role of coordination of the various authorities concerned (prefects, police, transporters, sports federations, local authorities, etc.). )”.
We will therefore have to do without, a little, the “essential” Michel Cadot, and find him or her a successor by the end of the year 2023.