Leave the doors open, “it’s 20 % more consumption and (…) it’s absurd,” said the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. The announced decrees are inspired by an already existing and poorly applied regulation.
Le Monde with AFP
Several cities in France had already launched the movement. The Minister of Energy Transition finally generalized it with a national decree, announced on Sunday July 24: the obligation made to air -conditioned stores to close their doors. Agnès Pannier-Runacher also announced the reduction in light advertising, largely inspired by already existing and poorly applied regulations.
“In the coming days, I will take two decrees: the first generalizes the prohibition of light advertisements regardless of the size of the city between 1 hour and 6 am”, with the exception of airports and Stations, and “the second prohibits shops from having their doors open while air conditioning and heating work,” the minister announced to Sunday newspaper (jdd).
Leave the doors open, “it’s 20 % more consumption and (…) it’s absurd”, justified Agnès Pannier-Runacher on RMC. Cities like Bourg-en-Bresse, then Lyon, Besançon and Paris have taken municipal orders since mid-July, when France had experienced an exceptional heat wave, so that air-conditioned stores close their doors, under penalty of ‘fine. The government plans to generalize this to the whole country, with up to 750 euros fine, but it will initially bet on the information of traders.
the luminous advertising prohibited in certain agglomerations
As for light advertising, current regulations distinguish agglomerations of more or less 800,000 inhabitants: it is prohibited between 1 hour and 6 am in France in those of less than 800,000 inhabitants. In those more populated, the rules depend on the local advertising regulation (RLP), if there is one.
The current law also already obliges to extinguish the bright brands and the shop windows from 1 am. The ministry could not specify the content of the next decree on Sunday, but explains that it will aim to “harmonize the rules”, without specifying the number of agglomerations today covered by an RLP or concretely how controls and sanctions , up to 1,500 euros, will be implemented.
“The contours will be specified” when the decree is released, “the idea is really that this is applicable now,” added the ministry. Today, non-compliance with the regulations, existing since 2013, is not very punished.
“The challenge remains to enforce these texts by those who have public responsibility: communities and the State”, recently commented on the Anpcen association, the National Association for the Protection of Heaven and Nocturnal environment, which fights against light pollution. “To date, not only does the State do not carry out the controls at its expense, but refers its charge to associative volunteers,” she denounces.
The Citizen Climate Convention, wanted by President Emmanuel Macron, was much more ambitious and had proposed to the government “the ban on these [advertising videos] in public space, public transport and in points of sale “, proposal which had been dismissed.