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ECONOMY

Paris’ extended café terraces can become permanent, city hall rules

The temporary extension to Paris café terraces that sprang up last year to help owners stick to social distancing rules can become permanent summer fixtures of the capital, city hall announced on Monday.

Published: 7 June 2021 16:05 CEST
Paris' extended café terraces can become permanent, city hall rules
Many Paris cafés have expanded their outdoor areas into streets or parking spaces. Photo: Thomas Coex/AFP

But they will have to shut down by 10pm so that residents won’t be kept awake by boisterous crowds, a problem that has exasperated neighbourhood groups.

The city turned over thousands of parking spaces last year to beleaguered restaurant and café owners who were no longer allowed to serve indoors as the pandemic raged.

Paris city authorities ruled that the terraces could stay in place this summer, prompting many café or bar owners to invest in more permanent structures that the often ramshackle extensions that sprang up in 2020.

But they have now decided that the extended spaces can become permanent summer features of the city – under certain conditions.

Terraces will have to remain without closed walls or roofs, but plants and other greenery will be encouraged, with an annual contest for the most attractive designs.

“Roofs, tarps, reception tents, wooden pallets and advertising will be prohibited,” the deputy mayor in charge of commerce, Olivia Polski, told AFP.

The terrasses éphémères (temporary terraces) will now be known as terrasses estival (summer terraces) and can return in the summers to come when -hopefully – the pandemic will be over.

Business owners will be charged a fee by City Hall for their temporary terraces, but this year that will be waived until September 30th, Franck Delvaux, president of the hospitality industry union, told France Info.

He said: “There was a need to regulate them. If we wanted to make them permanent so that they would become summer terraces, at some point we needed regulation so that there would be equality of rules.

“From now on, they will have to be paid for. But here too, we have made a lot of progress in our negotiations in securing an exemption until September 30th, which will allow the profession to work all summer with free fees.”

Outdoor seating can also be extended on adjacent squares and sidewalks, and also in front of neighbouring businesses if they give approval.

No heating or music systems will be allowed, and Polski said the city would step up deployments of specially developed “Meduse” microphones for pinpointing the sources of noise pollution across the city.

France’s cafés, bars and restaurants reopened on May 19th after a six-month closure. Initially they were only allowed to serve outdoors, but from Wednesday indoor areas will be allowed to reopen, while the curfew is moved back to 11pm.

READ ALSO Travel, bars and curfew – what changes in France on Wednesday

Delvaux added: “Today, when you walk around Paris, the terraces are full. It’s really l’art de vivre (the art of living).

“It’s what brings tourists to Paris.”

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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.

Published: 30 May 2023 15:46 CEST
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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