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ECONOMY

Expanded café terraces to return to Paris this summer

Parisians will once again be able to enjoy expanded terraces when restaurants, cafés and bars are finally allowed to reopen - possibly from mid-May.

Expanded café terraces to return to Paris this summer
Paris will be keeping its expanded café terraces this summer. Photo: Christophe Archambault/AFP

Around 8,000 bars, restaurants and cafés in the capital were allowed to stretch their outdoor terraces onto the pavement or the street in the summer of 2020 to allow more outdoor socialising.

The changes proved hugely popular, and were extended until June 2021.

Now, discussions are taking place between the town hall, local residents, and café and restaurant owners about a possible prolongation for the whole summer period.

“The stakeholders will participate in brainstorming sessions with regards to the look, the accessibility, security, cleanliness and potential problems related to shop displays and terraces,” Olivia Polski, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of commerce, told Le Parisien.

There will, however, be one difference this time around, according to Le Parisien: if bars and restaurants wish to occupy parking spaces as they did last summer, they will now have to pay.

The government is expected to lay out a more detailed plan for reopening in the coming days, with ‘mid May’ frequently touted as a date for reopening non-essential shops plus the outdoor areas of some cafés, bars and restaurants.

READ ALSO Curfew, shops, cafés and cinemas – what will France’s reopening look like?

However, while visiting a primary school in the Seine-et-Marne départment on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron warned that the re-opening of bars and restaurants will be done on a regional basis.

He confirmed that the government hopes terraces will be able to open again in mid-May in areas where the virus is under control.

“I don’t think we will be able to open restaurants in, say, late May or in June, in départments where the virus is circulating quickly,” Macron told journalists.

“But in others, where [the circulation] has fallen a lot, I think we’ll have to open them.” 

With some of the highest Covid rates in the country, Paris would be unlikely to be in the first phase for reopening.

MAP Where in France has the lowest Covid rates

Bars, cafés and restaurants in France will be hoping to use the summer period to make up for lost revenue, having been closed since October 29th 2020.

Parisians are not the only ones who will be able to make the most of outdoor dining this summer.

In Strasbourg, the town hall has already announced that restaurant owners will be allowed to request to double the size of their terraces in order to respect social distancing guidelines and many other towns are eyeing similar measures.

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ECONOMY

How is Denmark’s economy handling inflation and rate rises?

Denmark's economy is now expected to avoid a recession in the coming years, with fewer people losing their jobs than expected, despite high levels of inflation and rising interest rates, The Danish Economic Council has said in a new report.

How is Denmark's economy handling inflation and rate rises?

The council, led by four university economics professors commonly referred to as “the wise men” or vismænd in Denmark, gave a much rosier picture of Denmark’s economy in its spring report, published on Tuesday, than it did in its autumn report last year. 

“We, like many others, are surprised by how employment continues to rise despite inflation and higher interest rates,” the chair or ‘chief wise man’,  Carl-Johan Dalgaard, said in a press release.

“A significant drop in energy prices and a very positive development in exports mean that things have gone better than feared, and as it looks now, the slowdown will therefore be more subdued than we estimated in the autumn.”

In the English summary of its report, the council noted that in the autumn, market expectations were that energy prices would remain at a high level, with “a real concern for energy supply shortages in the winter of 2022/23”.

That the slowdown has been more subdued, it continued was largely due to a significant drop in energy prices compared to the levels seen in late summer 2022, and compared to the market expectations for 2023.  

The council now expects Denmark’s GDP growth to slow to 1 percent in 2023 rather than for the economy to shrink by 0.2 percent, as it predicted in the autumn. 

In 2024, it expects the growth rate to remain the same as in 2003, with another year of 1 percent GDP growth. In its autumn report it expected weaker growth of 0.6 percent in 2024.

What is the outlook for employment? 

In the autumn, the expert group estimated that employment in Denmark would decrease by 100,000 people towards the end of the 2023, with employment in 2024  about 1 percent below the estimated structural level. 

Now, instead, it expects employment will fall by just 50,000 people by 2025.

What does the expert group’s outlook mean for interest rates and government spending? 

Denmark’s finance minister Nikolai Wammen came in for some gentle criticism, with the experts judging that “the 2023 Finance Act, which was adopted in May, should have been tighter”.  The current government’s fiscal policy, it concludes “has not contributed to countering domestic inflationary pressures”. 

The experts expect inflation to stay above 2 percent in 2023 and 2024 and not to fall below 2 percent until 2025. 

If the government decides to follow the council’s advice, the budget in 2024 will have to be at least as tight, if not tighter than that of 2023. 

“Fiscal policy in 2024 should not contribute to increasing demand pressure, rather the opposite,” they write. 

The council also questioned the evidence justifying abolishing the Great Prayer Day holiday, which Denmark’s government has claimed will permanently increase the labour supply by 8,500 full time workers. 

“The council assumes that the abolition of Great Prayer Day will have a short-term positive effect on the labour supply, while there is no evidence of a long-term effect.” 

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