Snail operations carried out by fairgrounds are taking place throughout French territory this Wednesday. If the country is gradually deconfining, they will indeed have to wait until June 9 to be able to reopen their doors and welcome the public again. A meeting organized on Tuesday evening thus allowed the fairgrounds to obtain a clear reopening date but the snail operations are however maintained this Wednesday, causing traffic jams and slowdowns.
“The fairgrounds are clearly threatened and penalized unlike the pedestrian streets of city centers”, moved the Federation of fairgrounds of France disappointed that its members are deprived of reopening unlike cultural establishments, shops, circuses and other cafes authorized to resume their activities this Wednesday. “We had to set up this movement so that last night, we finally obtained a protocol that we have been waiting for since March,” said Nicolas Lemay, president of the Federation of fairgrounds of France, at our colleagues from France Bleu.
“No valid reason to prevent them from working”
“An ordinance of January 25 authorized us to reopen under the same conditions as cultural activities, but this is not the case today”, noted Tuesday the representative of the fairgrounds, quoted by our colleagues from the Northern voice. Faced with the situation, the showmen had decided to seize there again the Council of State, which receives today the professionals of the world of the night.
Nicolas Lemay argued then that “there is no valid reason to [les] prevent working unless the Covid has focused on the rides “, before adding that” there is less brewing at [eux] than in shopping centers, etc. “.
At midday, dozens of kilometers of traffic jams and slowdowns were recorded on several French highways, according to the company Vinci Autoroutes. In the North of France, on the A2 motorway, a convoy of fairgrounds at the Hordain toll barrier causes disturbances over 4 km in the direction Brussels / Paris and over 3 km in the opposite direction, specified the road vigilance unit. On the A26 motorway, in the direction Reims-Calais, the disturbances spread over 5 km.
Disturbances over several kilometers
“We have started a snail operation from the Sète (Hérault) toll on the A9 to the commercial port of Sète and Frontignan,” Stéphane Dubief, founding member of the Fédération des Forains de France, told AFP. The action is scheduled until 19:00 on this important axis of the Mediterranean coast, he added.
On the A10 at the Virsac tollbooth, near Bordeaux, the fairgrounds blocked both directions of traffic, only allowing vehicles to pass by drop-outs. The prefecture indicates that “thirty trucks and sixty people” slowed down traffic from 7:00 am to 10:00 am.
The fairgrounds also installed a filter dam on the Fresnes les Montauban toll on the A1 in the Paris-Lille direction and caused a localized slowdown. Slowdowns and blockages were also observed in the Grand Est, where the prefecture of Moselle noted a little before 11 a.m. eleven kilometers of slowdown on the A4 between St-Avold and Metz and predicted new difficulties around 5 p.m.
In Brittany, according to the gendarmerie, the fairgrounds carried out a snail operation with 24 heavy goods vehicles on the RN 165 between Quimper and Lorient.
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