The authorities will vet hundreds of thousands of participants, volunteers and workers.

The Public Administration Security Investigation Service will be examining the criminal records of those in France’s Olympic zones in preparation for the Paris 2024 Olympics, with the goal of “preventing violations of public order and risks to national security”.

The authorities will screen hundreds of thousands of athletes and workers in total until the opening ceremony.

Around sixty agents recruited by the national police have just started to analyse the profiles of 45 thousand volunteers selected by the organisers of the Paris 2024 Olympics, Le Parisien reports.

The team of analysts is examining whether or not individuals entering the safe Olympic zones could pose a terrorist threat. If someone is found to be a potential threat, they will not receive accreditation for the event. In addition to volunteers, all those who work at the Olympic venues – security guards, journalists, cooks – and thousands of athletes, are subject to this audit.

The audit always starts with a ‘screening’ carried out using an in-house application that has access to a multitude of police, judicial and intelligence files, and even international files containing Interpol data on wanted persons.

This process is automated and instantaneous. If the person is given a green light, the investigation is complete, but if a red light appears on the screen, indicating a criminal record or a report on radicalisation, the analysts will investigate the person further.

The French police said they were working with the organisers of the Olympic to develop appropriate security measures against bomb threats, the France24 television channel reported earlier.

“The Olympic Games pose a major challenge,” the director of the central police laboratory said, adding that they will inspect every Olympic venue before they are handed over to the organisers. The other big challenge they are preparing for is “the likely increase in the number of suspicious parcels abandoned by people moving around during the Olympics,” which will presumably require action in many instances.

After the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, France saw an increase in bomb alerts at tourist attractions such as the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles.

Around 2,000 security guards will be deployed to the venue for the opening ceremony on 16 July, and some 30 thousand police officers and soldiers will be mobilised to secure the surrounding area. 600 thousand spectators are expected to attend the ceremony.