How the government plans to shower public money on circuses that are becoming sedentary while allowing them to continue mistreating wild animals
On 2 December 2025, the government announced the upcoming launch of a call for expressions of interest (AMI) to support travelling circuses in their conversion to stationary establishments. In these second-rate, completely illegal zoos, the confinement and training of wild animals will continue, as the State has definitively given up on offering them retirement in sanctuaries. One Voice denounces yet another betrayal of the spirit of the law against animal abuse passed in 2021 and will not hesitate to take legal action if this project goes ahead.
As early as January 2021, we sounded the alarm about the dramatic consequences of a law targeting only travelling circuses. By allowing these establishments to become sedentary, the ambition to end the exploitation of wild animals in circuses has been abandoned in favour of a simple ban on travelling… A superficial measure which, while sparing captive individuals long journeys, does not protect them from the violence of training or the cruelty of confinement… Parc Saint-Léger, against which we filed another complaint in 2023, already gives a chilling glimpse of what awaits these sedentary animals: tiny enclosures, empty feeding bowls, spectators invited to enter the enclosures at the risk of injuring those imprisoned there…
The State is abandoning the animals: we are fighting back
On 3 July 2023, a new milestone had already been reached with the publication of a ministerial decree establishing an equivalence between circus performers’ certificates of competence and those of zoos, allowing trainers who become sedentary to keep animals of new species, such as giraffes, for example. We obviously challenged this scandalous text. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Ecological Transition deliberately failed to publish the decrees implementing the law, starting with the one on the breeding of big cats, and also failed to finance sanctuaries. For months, it has allowed circus operators to breed lion and tiger cubs left, right and centre in order to fuel illegal trafficking, and to rid themselves, in the worst possible conditions, of the elephants they had kept locked up their entire lives.
In 2024, we challenged the Council of State on the distinction between stationary and travelling establishments. Our request was forwarded to the Constitutional Council where we argued for a ban on wild animals in all circuses.
In its response to a written question from MP Corinne Vignon, proposing support for the sedentarisation of travelling establishments, the government is therefore persisting in its disregard for the spirit of the law of November 2021 and in its determination to continue, at all costs, the worst form of mistreatment of wild animals, many of which belong to endangered species. If this shameful call for expressions of interest is launched, we will react immediately. Sign our petition to add your voice to ours in calling for a ban on animals in circuses.