Local arbitrations seem to have inspired the government.
This Sunday, the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, announced imminent decisions to force stores to reduce their energy consumption.
"In the coming days, I will issue two decrees: the first 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, and "the second prohibits stores from having their doors open while the air conditioning and heating are working", detailed the minister in the Journal du Dimanche.
Leaving the doors open, "it's 20% more consumption and (…) it's absurd", justified Agnès Pannier-Runacher on RMC this Sunday.
Read alsoIn Paris, leaving the door of its air-conditioned store open will cost a fine of 150 euros
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 up to 750 euros in fines.
But it will focus initially on the information of traders.
An existing law but little applied
As for luminous advertising, the current regulations vary according to the size of the agglomerations: it is prohibited between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. in France in those with 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 obliges to turn off illuminated signs and shop windows from 1 am.
The ministry could not specify this Sunday 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, nor concretely how the controls and sanctions, up to 1,500 euros, will be implemented.
“The contours will be specified” when the decree comes out.
“The idea is really that this is applicable from now on,” added the ministry.
VIDEO.
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Today, non-compliance with the regulations, which have existed since 2013, is not sanctioned very much.
"The challenge remains to enforce these texts by those who have public responsibility for them: local authorities and the State", recently commented the ANPCEN association, which fights against light pollution.
"To date, not only does the State not carry out the controls at its expense, but returns the responsibility to the voluntary associations", she denounces.
The Citizen's Convention for the Climate, wanted by President Emmanuel Macron, was much more ambitious and had proposed to the government "the banning of these screens (advertising videos) in public space, public transport and in points of sale “, proposal which had been rejected.
