[Communiqué de presse] Nîmoises and Nîmois deprived of their markets during this difficult time

In our city only 2 markets have reopened: that of Boulevard Jean-Jaurès on Friday May 8 and that of Pissevin on May 13.

Valdegour markets, Chemin-Bas d’Avignon and Mas de Mingue, as well as the two markets (horticulture and textiles) are still closed. For reopened markets, the “openings” are very insufficient and incomprehensible. Two markets are only open to food, even since the deconfinement of May 11, whose exhibitors-producers are very few:

• on the Pissevin market (little reminder: more than 100 exhibitors when it was held at Place Debussy, around sixty since it has been on Place Goethe) and only 4 exhibitors on May 13 … and 10 exhibitors on Wednesday 20
• on the market of Jean Jaurès, 10 exhibitors on May 8, twenty (out of more than 80) on May 22. However, large spaces are empty on the 2 markets, where the movement of buyers could be very easily organized over a larger area.

Common problems in open markets :

• what happens to non-food traders?
• how food marketers can they live with only one market every 2, 3 or 4 weeks?
• what relationship between merchants and customers when there is a permanent turnover? It is impossible for buyers to know in advance which stalls will be present on the market, which encourages buyers not to return.
• what are the advantages for users? the limited choice and the large queues do not encourage them to move

Problem for Pissevin users (and others closed in working-class neighborhoods):

These markets are the cheapest places in Nîmes and their least silver customers (for Pissevin, they come from all over the city, and from 50km around for the same reason), while prices have increased in local shops in these districts.

Problem for the Jean Jaurès market known as the “farmers market”:

• it is proposed to the vendor-sellers to come only every other week during this most productive spring season. It is completely ignoring the functioning of a producer market; the production is not stored in refrigerators, we sell when it is ripe! And market gardeners called on May 8 were not contacted on May 15 or 22, which was theoretically planned by the Town Hall. Furthermore, for the Jean Jaurès market, the town hall decided to favor producers from the Gard and therefore only retained 40 stallions out of a total of 80. This means that half of the stallions in the Jean Jaurès market do not come from Gard, in normal times? It’s very surprising! In this difficult period many finally realize that short circuits are essential for our local economy and reduce energy costs. However, it seems that the municipal authorities are trying to deprive us of our Gard producers while we are all looking for local products.
• What is the point of concentrating the market on a small area and not extending the market to the “bull”? The Nîmoises and the Nîmois, the buyers, are very dissatisfied. Some say they will never return, discouraged by the limited supply and large queues, which will also prompt large numbers of sellers to stop coming. The sellers are also very angry, and allude to article 1 and to annex 1 of decree 2020-548 of May 12, 2020 which indicates that food, manufactured and mixed markets are authorized (info from the document released yesterday on the market by the national federation of the markets of France) Why this article of the decree is not applied to Nîmes, whereas the town halls of Alès, Bagnols, Uzès… (the largest markets of the department after Nîmes) organize almost “normal” markets, while respecting, of course, health rules? And how can we understand that all the supermarkets function normally as well as the Halles de Nîmes, when the security conditions prevailing there are certainly not better? This is why the Nîmes Citoyenne à Gauche list requires that the outdoor markets be reopened with sanitary conditions respected.

Vincent Bouget and Jo Menut
Nîmes Citizen on the Left

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