"Shifting our dates is impossible because our programming depends on foreign festivals"
Matthieu Ducos, director of Rock en Seine in western Paris
In this mid-December, nothing is yet recorded.
I am patient and combative.
Rock en Seine is one of the main outdoor festivals in Paris, along with Solidays, We Love Green and Lollapalooza, so one of the most affected by the Olympics.
Rock en Seine takes place in the Parc de Saint-Cloud at the end of August to the west of Paris and we attract 40,000 festival-goers.
We have 45 people from the DOPC-DSPAP, one or two mobile forces from the CRS or gendarmerie, i.e. between 70 and 110 agents.
I am still in discussion with the prefect of Hauts-de-Seine to find solutions.
We are trying to see if it is possible to reduce the number of mobile forces needed or to call on the municipal police rather than the national police and the gendarmes.
The contacts are benevolent so I hope to get there.
An outdoor festival is linked to the weather, the availability of the venue and the tours of the artists.
I have eight permanent employees.
Not having a Rock en Seine in 2024 is equivalent to a loss of several hundred thousand euros.
But shifting our dates is impossible because our program is built in conjunction with several foreign festivals.
I discuss in parallel with the Olympic Committee and the Cultural Olympiads in the idea of collaborating around
a musical day tinged with the Olympic values.
In 2024, contrary to tradition, no major musical event is planned.
Here too, nothing is simple either: between the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games, there will be the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Paris.
"The atmosphere is collaborative, the word cancellation has never been said"
Jean-Paul Rolland director of the Eurockéennes, in Belfort
Despite two days canceled due to a violent storm, some 60,000 people attended the Eurockéennes 2022 concerts. JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN / AFP
We still don't have a date to announce for Eurockéennes 2024, but next year the festival runs from June 29 to July 2.
Traditionally, the Eurockéennes are held at the end of June-beginning of July over four days and nights.
Located on the Malsaucy peninsula, our rock, pop, electro and hip-hop festival attracts 135,000 people over four days.
With 15,000 occupants, the campsite became the department's second city on those days.
In addition to the 350 private agents of the festival, the prefect of the Territory of Belfort provides 210 local gendarmes and complete with a handful of mobile and equestrian guards from elsewhere.
It is this national reinforcement that is a concern with the Olympics.
In normal times, already, if the gendarmes ask for a company, they get half.
We also do not know if our local gendarmes will be called elsewhere in France.
Belfort has an asset: l.
If we know early enough, we can move forward a weekend.
No more, because we do our programming with Montreux in Switzerland, Roskilde in Denmark and Werchter in Belgium.
About ten days ago, we had a big meeting at the prefecture with the gendarmerie, the police.
Also present were interlocutors who are not usually assigned to Eurockéennes such as the municipal police.
The atmosphere is collaborative, the word cancellation has never been said.
I remain confident.
We have to meet again with the gendarmerie in January.
They will estimate by then the minimum of gendarmes they need.
Three points work in our favour:
the Territoire de Belfort is far from the Olympic venues.
The closest are in Lyon and Paris, 340 and 430 km away.
We don't take place during the scarlet period and especially Belfort has one of the smallest gendarme companies in France.
In "aspiring" for the Olympics seems unlikely.
“Artists cannot be everywhere at the same time”
Sébastien Piganiol, director of the Festival La Paille in Métabief, in the Doubs
The La Paille festival is held on agricultural land at altitude at the end of July, between the hay season and the onset of cool nights.
Jérôme Saillard/Straw Festival
Our contemporary music festival, where we receive artists like Grand Corps Malade and Kimberose, is held at the end of July over two evenings in Métabief in the Doubs, ten kilometers from the border with Switzerland.
In recent weeks, the teams from the Ministry of Culture have contacted me to encourage us to change the date to 2024 because of the Olympics.
We are hundreds of miles from the Olympic venues but our festival is July 26-27, the opening ceremony of the games and we need a Mobile Force Unit squadron.
We cannot move to early July, because the festival is held on agricultural land and the haying is not finished at the beginning of summer.
At the end of August, it is too cold at this altitude and there is one hour less light.
Shifting our dates also poses a concern for concentration with the other festivals in the region.
The No Logo specializing in reggae is mid-August, two weeks after us.
Paléo in Nyon, the biggest open-air festival in Switzerland, is July 18-23, a week before us.
And the Eurockéennes in Belfort are at the beginning of July.
Artists cannot be everywhere at the same time.
Our UFM squadron consists of about fifteen military sentries and we also have ten reserve gendarmes for traffic.
I think we can do without them.
The sentinels were imposed on us in 2018 after the Bataclan.
Fortunately, we have excellent relations with the sub-prefecture of Pontarlier.
Instead of reasoning festival by festival, as the Ministry of Culture does from Paris,
“Why oppose sport and culture?
This is not the image that France must show during the Olympics.
Olivier Connan, director of the Nuits Secrètes festival in Aulnoye-Aymeries in Hauts-de-France
More than 50,000 people are expected each year at Secret Nights, near Valenciennes, scheduled for the third weekend of July.
Secret Nights
Orelsan, Feu Chatterton, Damso, Juliette Armanet… For twenty years, we have been attracting 50 to 60,000 festival-goers on the third weekend of July, including 7,000 campers.
The festival created by local people is located in the Avesnois natural park, on a meadow in the town of Aulnoye-Aymeries.
We are 1 hour from Lille.
In addition to our five scenes, our particularity is to organize artistic creations with a secret route.
Buses crisscross the city, the public gets on them without knowing where they are going and which artist they are going to see.
You can find yourself at 50-200 people in front of Jeanne Added for example.
We also highlight emerging artists.
Christine and the Queens or even Camille gave their first concerts here.
Our budget is 3 million euros (of which only 20,000 paid by the
State) and we estimate the economic benefits at around 9 million euros.
Nearly 1,000 people, including 600 volunteers, work on Les Nuits Secrètes.
In 2024, our dates are set for July 19-20-21, one week before the Olympics.
Since 2016 after the Bataclan, the State has asked us to use around twenty national police officers and around twenty military sentries.
Since the declarations of the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin in the Senate two months ago, we are very worried.
A few days later, the office of the Ministry of Culture contacted us and we discovered that we were having a problem.
Shifting our dates is unfortunately not that simple.
We are on the third weekend of July for good reasons.
In our area you have the Main Square Festival the first weekend in July and the Dourfestival 30 kilometers away in Belgium the following weekend.
If you group all the festivals at the beginning of July,
there will be a concern for concentration for the artists and for the service providers in sound, light, set-up and dismantling of the stage.
If we leave at the end of August, it will be too cold.
We have the impression that the teams from the Ministries of the Interior and of Culture make very “Parisian-centric” decisions.
We are 300 kilometers from Paris in a rural area and I sensed a lack of consideration towards us, an ignorance of our professions and our importance at the regional level.
And why oppose sport and culture?
This is not the image that France should show during the Olympics.
The circular published this week is a starting point for discussion with the prefect and the sub-prefect.
I can't believe that a festival like ours in a rural area a week before the opening of the Olympics could be a problem.
Local solutions must be found.
“Everyone is trying to make an effort but I have to know by the end of the year”
Angelo Goppee, director of Live Nation France and of the Lollapalooza festival in Paris
For the Parisian edition of Lollapalooza, the Longchamp racecourse is mobilized.
But there are not many alternative slots in the calendar.
GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
For now, I'm trying to find an alternative.
Our festival, which attracts 65,000 festival-goers, is held at the Hippodrome Paris Longchamps in the west of Paris on the third weekend of July, therefore near the Olympic sites and in the heart of the red zone.
We need two or three mobile force squadrons.
I would like to shift by a week but that means shifting the horse racing grand prix on July 14 and the Solidays Festival at the end of June.
It's complicated because it takes several days to set up and take down if our festival is close to that of Solidays.
We multiply the meetings where everyone tries to make an effort.
I need to know by the end of 2022 because then the question of technical service providers, sound and light will arise.