Massive blow to the agricultural fair of Châlons-en-Champagne: this meeting, the second largest behind the traditional Salon de l'Agriculture, was canceled on Monday. This decision was taken by the organizers in the face of the refusal of the Prefect of the Marne to grant an exemption of more than 5,000 participants per day. The president of this agricultural fair, Bruno Forget, evokes on Europe 1 "hundreds of jobs which will disappear" following this cancellation linked to the progression of the coronavirus.
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"I am appalled", confides Bruno Forget two weeks before this fair which was to welcome nearly 750 exhibitors and 250,000 people in ten days. "We say 5,000 people, exhibitors, employees, service providers, teams ... We are already 3,000 people. 2,000 visitors a day in a fair which welcomes 250,000, in fact, we cannot organize it", explains the person in charge for justify this decision.
"Symbol of recovery"
However, Bruno Forget regrets the "diktat of the Parisian technostructure" in this decision: "We had taken all precautions and asked our exhibitors to come and test themselves before," he says. For his part, the prefect affirmed that his refusal had been motivated by three reasons: "The epidemic which seems to start again with a growing number of asymptomatic young people, a direction of circulation difficult to organize while respecting the rules of distancing and the organization of concerts where several thousand people are present ".
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True economic lung, should the fair despite everything be held in a context of progression of the epidemic on the national territory? "It was the symbol of the revival," laments Bruno Forget. "The fair would have demonstrated by proof that we had to and could live with the virus because we were making the necessary arrangements."
3,000 jobs affected
With a 2020 edition canceled, the consequences should therefore be "dramatic", according to Bruno Forget. "The impact will represent tens and tens of millions of euros," said Ludovic Vachet, co-president of the Commercial, Industrial and Craft Union, organizer of the event. "The fair is still more than 3,000 jobs."