Cities like Bourg-en-Bresse, Lyon, Besançon and Paris have already issued municipal decrees to force air-conditioned stores to close their doors.
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Energy sobriety also involves prohibitions. Agnès Pannier-Runacher announced, on Sunday July 24, future decrees to force air-conditioned stores to close their doors and reduce illuminated advertising. The decree aims to prohibit “shops to have their doors open while the air conditioning and heating is working”explained the Minister for Energy Transition to the Sunday newspaper.
“Air conditioning with the door open is no longer acceptable.”
Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Energy Transitionat the 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 decrees since mid-July, when France experienced an exceptional heat wave, for air-conditioned stores to close their doors, under penalty of a fine. The government plans to generalize this to the whole country, with a fine of up to 750 euros, but it will initially focus on informing traders.
As for illuminated advertising, the Minister intends to draw inspiration for advertising largely from the rules that already exist and are poorly applied. Decree “generalizes the ban on illuminated advertisements regardless of the size of the city between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.” with the exception of airports and train stations, explains in the JDD Agnes Pannier-Runacher. Current regulations distinguish agglomerations of more or less 800,000 inhabitants: it is prohibited between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. in France in those of less than 800,000 inhabitants. In more populated ones, the rules depend on the local advertising regulations (RLP) if there is one.
The current law also already requires that neon signs and shop windows be turned off from 1 a.m. The ministry could not specify the content of the next decree, but explains that it will aim to “harmonize the rules”without specifying the number of agglomerations today covered by an RLP or concretely how the controls and sanctions, up to 1,500 euros, will be implemented. “The contours will be specified” when the decree will come out, assured the ministry.