The Braderie de Lille opens this Saturday, postponed due to the Paris Olympics

Kick-off for one of the largest flea markets in Europe. The 2024 edition of the Braderie de Lille, which attracts nearly 2.5 million visitors each year, opened this Saturday morning, two weeks later than usual due to the Paris Paralympic Games. Despite this delay, announced in January 2023 by the mayor of Lille Martine Aubry, “no one is missing, everyone is there”the mayor rejoiced on Friday morning on France Bleu Nord, specifying that 5,500 exhibitors were expected, including “half of the inhabitants, 2000 traders and 545 second-hand and antique dealers”The sale traditionally takes place on the first weekend of September.

Although officially banned before the start of the sale on Saturday at 8am, sales began on Friday in some pedestrian areas of the city, an AFP journalist noted. Since 2017, the sale of any new product or object (excluding sedentary businesses) has been “strictly prohibited”the city presenting the event as “the largest European showcase for reuse”.

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3000 security forces mobilized

While 500 tons of mussels will be devoured over the weekend, Lille invites restaurateurs to make piles of mussels in the perimeter of the sale and to report them to allow their recycling. As for unsold food, they will be distributed Monday at noon during a “big solidarity meal”organized by the city with associations, traders and restaurateurs.

The event, the scope of which was reduced after the attack in Nice in 2016, also has a major security impact: “3000 state agents (police, gendarmes, customs officers, military) will be mobilized”the North prefecture said on Friday. In addition, 626 concrete blocks and 1,550 barriers secure access to the perimeter of the sale.

Users have expressed fears that the disorder comes from public transport, whose operation has been degraded for several weeks due to maintenance problems amid suspicions of asbestos. While car traffic is prohibited in the vicinity of the flea market, trains on metro line 2 will run every 2 minutes 45 seconds, indicated Ilevia, the public transport network of the Lille metropolitan area. In 2023, the frequency of metro trains on the same line was between 1 minute 30 and 2 minutes during the day.