Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

RETAIL

France plans to extend 24/7 shop openings

The French government is beginning work on measures to extend the rights of shops to stay open all night, something that is currently strictly regulated.

Published: 13 November 2019 12:16 CET

France plans to extend 24/7 shop openings

The strict rules around supermarket night opening could be relaxed. Photo: AFP

The issue of night opening of food shops – including supermarkets and minimarkets – will be worked on by the government over the next 18 months, it was announced on Wednesday.

The issue is a contentious one in France, as unions have traditionally opposed measures that would involve employees working more anti-social hours. This summer the first hypermarkets to trial opening on a Sunday afternoon were the target of pickets and protests.

The government had first planned a consultation on the subject, but rather than face a likely outcry by unions, it has instead opted to simply prepare an ordonannce “within 18 months” for any measures necessary for night opening of a food shop.

The proposed text will allow supermarkets and mini markets to open from 9pm onwards under the same rules as other night businesses such as cinemas, bars and clubs.

At the moment although food shops are allowed to open until late at night or all night, they can only do so under very strict conditions.

The conditions include double pay for employees, night shifts done on a strictly voluntary basis, equivalent compensatory rest and contributions to travel costs.

The relaxation of these rules would likely lead to more all-night opening, which the government says will benefit shift workers.

READ ALSO French Sunday supermarket opening – highly convenient or the sign of a dehumanised society?

Currently most supermarkets close at either 9pm or 9.30pm and among those that do offer 24/7 opening, it is generally only for one day a week.

Although many minimarkets open all day on Sunday, until this summer the bigger supermarkets and hypermarkets were either closed all day on Sunday or only opened in the morning.

The trial of Sunday afternoon opening – which has been rolled out by the Casino chain – involved automated tills only in the afternoon, meaning that customers cannot buy alcohol or knives.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

OPINION: The new luxury Samaritaine store is an example of the 'Disneyfication' of Paris

President Emmanuel Macron at the reopening of La Samaritaine. Photo: Christophe Archambault/AFP

Until 2005, La Samaritaine was the most popular and least fashionable department store in Paris, a Gallic version of Grace Brothers from “Are You Being Served”.

The store’s jumble of five linked buildings between the Rue de Rivoli and the river Seine was one of the few remaining islands of unselfconscious, authentic, non-tourist grittiness in central Paris. You could find everything in La Samaritaine from underpants to diamond tiaras; from puppies to concrete-mixers; from ready-made curtains to piranha fish.

IN PICTURES See inside the revamped Samaritaine store

Entering La Samaritaine was like playing a game of three dimensional snakes and ladders. Each floor had six or seven different levels, joined by slopes of worn linoleum or by short flights of steps. To get from curtains to electrical goods, supposedly on the same floor, you climbed a few stairs into showers and bathrooms, turned right and went down again.

After 16 years of dereliction and legal wrangles, La Samaritaine re-opened again this week – as a supermarket for luxury brands, a five-star hotel and a gourmet roof restaurant with an unrivalled view onto the river and the Île de Cité. It will have private viewing rooms for the super-rich. It will have cafés, where you can eat top of the range burgers and caviar-on-baguette.

The staff of the old Samaritaine were the least helpful in Paris and consequently the world. The new staff will wear chinos and sneakers – and a smile.

The slogan of the old store was “The whole of Paris comes to La Samaritaine.”. The new store is aimed at the richer citizens of Yokohama or Shanghai.

The destruction of the old Samaritaine was romantically, historically and socially a calamity. It was also, I suppose, inevitable.

The modern world, and modern retailing methods, passed La Samaritaine by on the other side. People no longer wanted to go to a shop in central Paris to buy a concrete mixer or lawn-mower or even a pet piranha fish. Samaritaine still had 12 models of lawn-mowers when it was closed overnight, allegedly for safety reason, in 2005.

The world’s biggest luxury goods conglomerate, Louis-Vuitton-Moet-Hennessy (LVMH) – has spent €700 million on re-building and re-imagining La Samaritaine, ripping out the sloping floors and worn lino but preserving its 1907 art nouveau metal stair-cases and galleries.

A spectacular, pale-yellow fresco of peacocks which surrounds the main atrium was all but lost in the old clutter. It has been wonderfully restored.

No doubt the new Samaritaine will be a great success – once the foreign tourists come in great numbers to France again. The new hotel, Le Cheval Blanc, will be the only “palais”, or five-star hotel, in Paris to have rooms and suites with views onto the river Seine.

All the same, the transformation is cruelly emblematic of what has happened to central Paris in the last two or three decades. There is a campaign going on at present against the alleged saccage (destruction) of the French capital by bicycle-lanes, ugly street furniture and graffiti and poorly maintained gardens. I have sympathy with some, but not all, of the complaints.

What I regret far more – without knowing how it could have been prevented – is the fact that the inner arrondissements of Paris have lost so much of their quirkiness and eccentricity in recent decades.

The international travel boom (pre-Covid) has turned central Paris into a self-conscious, though still beautiful, “Parisland”, a tourist theme-park to match Disneyland 40 kilometres to the east. Even relatively well-off families are being pushed out by high rents and property prices.

The re-opening of La Samaritaine, delayed for a year by the Covid pandemic, is one of a flurry of restorations and recreations of land-mark buildings in central Paris this summer.

The Musée Carnavalet, which traces the history of the city, has been cleverly re-thought and re-designed. The Bourse du Commerce, a spectacular circular building near Les Halles which was moribund for decades, has been resurrected as an art museum and exhibition space by the billionaire art-collector and entrepreneur (Gucci and FNAC) François Pinault.

The Hotel de la Marine, one half of the imposing 18^th century terrace which stands on the north side of the Place de la Concorde, has been beautifully restored as a series of restaurants and exhibition spaces.

All of these buildings are within 15 minutes walk of one another – and all are a short stroll from the Louvre and the Palais Royal and Notre Dame. They are, in their revived form, great and welcome adornments to the capital which will be appreciated by Parisians and visitors alike.

Except for La Samaritaine.

I cannot see the new version of this once great institution as anything but a theft – a loss, a diminution of what once made central Paris not just beautiful but idiosyncratic and unmistakably itself.

And, in any case, where in earth does one now go in Paris if you suddenly need to buy a pneumatic drill?

Url copied to clipboard!