Victim of its success, the Paris Agricultural Show has decided to close its doors on Saturday around 4:30 p.m., two hours earlier than planned, for security reasons, the very high attendance making it difficult to circulate in the aisles.
A relatively rare decision for a consumer show of this type.
Visitors were turned away late Saturday afternoon at the entrance to the Porte de Versailles exhibition center. The show, which started on February 25, is due to reopen as normal on Sunday for its last day.
Safety first
” It’s catastrophic. Since 4:30 p.m., we have not been able to return. There is no place to get reimbursed, ”plagues Sami Honein, a 38-year-old Parisian, stranded outside with his partner.
Messages over the loudspeakers say to come back the next day. The organizers have just announced that no more visitors can enter “in order to ensure everyone’s safety”.
“It is not a question of preventing but of securing. Our living room is a popular party that must remain comfortable, ”they underlined in a press release.
Good atmosphere and crushed feet
In the aisles, with his stroller which accommodates his two-and-a-half-year-old twins, Yanick Saint-Ange “rolled on two, three feet, but that’s fine, people are quite cool and respectful”. “Since it’s a double stroller, people move away pretty quickly,” he jokes.
Lucie Pastor and her family form a troop of nine people around the rabbit cages. “There were times when we couldn’t move forward,” she says, citing the surroundings of the enclosure for the muse cow of this 59 edition, Ovalie, and the food stands. However, she was not “worried” for her safety: “At no time were people aggressive. »
Without moderation
The public, largely family, is also made up of clusters of alcoholic visitors, increasingly uninhibited as the visiting hours stretch and the beer barrels empty, noted AFP journalists on the spot.
“A drink with friends, yes, but always in moderation”: the message resonates regularly in the pavilions and, to ease the alcoholic tension a little, “soakers” – employees loaded with cans of water to rehydrate visitors – are mobilized.
“Frustrating”
At the show, “there has always been a festive atmosphere and a lot of young people”, remarks Alexandre, 33, wedged between a stand of foie gras and the very dense flow of visitors in an alley, while some, lewd, sing the Marseillaise.
A little further on, a retired couple, jostled, almost lost their balance. “For security, it’s not going at all”, annoys Alfred Josephe. “We were able to visit everywhere but it’s difficult, we were blocked” in places.
In the middle of the week, Arnaud Lemoine, director of the National Center for Agricultural Exhibitions and Competitions (Ceneca), owner of the Salon, had called for preserving this “great popular festival” from excess alcohol. “This fair is a popular, family celebration, and must remain so. We are not a festival, ”he said to AFP.
The attendance record dates back to 2014, with more than 700,000 visitors over the duration of the show. They were around 500,000 last year, for the first edition since the Covid-19 pandemic.