Emilie Bonnivard is MP for Savoie and special rapporteur for the Tourism Budget.
Despite the Prime Minister's announcements on Monday, February 1 on aid to winter tourism businesses, it is clear that there is still uncertainty and the lack of concrete and fully adapted measures to rescue this economy.
From the start, the Government has struggled to understand and support the mountain economy in an appropriate manner, which is suffering the worst crisis it has known for 30 years.
We have never experienced such a dark season.
Never have I known so much disarray and anxiety among these entrepreneurs, traders, who have often invested all their savings and their entire lives in their activity.
A season stopped for the mountains, it is as if the classic economy stopped for 1 year, since winter tourist activity is concentrated 7 / 7h, 42h per week, over the 4 winter months.
Would we accept that businesses in the traditional economy, our businesses, sustainably suffer from 90% reductions in turnover without saying anything or doing anything?
However, this is exactly what is happening with these mountain companies.
These 4 winter months represent 80% of the turnover of resort companies.
These 80% make it possible to assume heavy loads, throughout the year.
It is this economic model that the Government is unable to understand and support.
Without the mountain economy, there would no longer be a school, no longer a doctor, agriculture would not be what it is.
The mountain economy, contrary to popular belief, is not reserved for the "
rich
", it supports tens of thousands of families in the mountains, all year round.
Without it, there would no longer be a school in the mountains, no longer a doctor, agriculture would not be what it is.
This economy greatly slowed down the massive rural exodus experienced by all mountain dwellers in the 1960s, by offering them a perspective for the future.
If the mountain is alive, if men and women live there year round, it is thanks to this economy.
In winter, it supports tens of thousands of seasonal workers from all over France.
Far from being a cash economy, the mountain dwellers and their entrepreneurs, for generations, have continued to improve our resorts and their villages.
Thanks to them, France is the world leader in skiing.
To read also:
“Let's save our businesses before it's too late!”
From the beginning of December, and following the announcements of the President of the Republic at the end of November, we, however, mountain parliamentarians, repeatedly alerted the Government to the urgent need to work on suitable mechanisms.
What difficulties to be heard, to be understood.
And meanwhile our fellow citizens are waiting, seeing their cash melt like snow in the sun, wondering how they are going to be able to finish the month.
So much time wasted since our first alerts ...
It is the beginning of February, that is to say a month and a half after the normal start of the season, two months after our alerts, and these companies have still not received any help.
Worse, the Government had to be convinced to modify the criteria initially decided for these companies, which absolutely did not take into account the seasonality of the activity or the gravity of the situation.
What can we say to our fellow citizens in distress, who have invested and who have no right to anything because the Government says "we do not know how to help them"?
.
What anger when after hundreds of letters, hundreds of calls, since December, to find a solution for the businesses taken over or newly created, we still have no answer.
What can we say to our fellow citizens in distress, who have invested and who have no right to anything because the Government says "
they have no previous turnover, so we do not know how to help them
"?
Is it acceptable, for a young couple who have invested and borrowed more than 400,000 euros to buy a business, to start the season, without any income, and who risk bankruptcy even before having been able to earn the 1st euro? ?
We have been making concrete proposals for more than a month to correct these situations (taking into account previous turnover in the event of a takeover and fixed-price assistance for newly created companies).
Always nothing.
To read also:
"The ban of alpine skiing will have vertiginous economic and social consequences"
What anger at the inability to take into account the situation of multi-active workers, these employees, farmers, who are also winter monitors or other, by not offering them access to aid from the Solidarity Fund, for an activity which is however their primary source of income.
What anger also at the inability to understand that it is not only the stations and their businesses that are affected, but the entire economic ecosystem of the mountain, which is affected, the unaided printers, on whom the activity depends to more than 50 or 60% of the stations, the manufacturers of ski lifts, all the engineering of the fitting out of the assembly, deprived of all their orders, and therefore shut down not for a few months, but for two years minimum.
We are asking for the creation of a mountain “task force”, which can quickly build and quickly put in place a mountain rescue plan.
Because it is the particular temporality of this economy that the Government does not manage to fit into the boxes of its mechanisms).
Finally, what anger to see that all the accommodation providers, tourist residences, vacation centers, still do not have a suitable device for their safeguard.
This felt and experienced anger is not there by chance.
It is unfortunately the fruit of the frustration we have, we deputies, specialists in this very particular economy, connoisseurs of its traders, its seasonal workers, its mountain medical practices, of this whole interdependent and unique ecosystem, of never being heard, despite our proposals, or too late.
Every day I receive dozens of worry and dismay emails.
My fellow citizens follow the announcements, wait for the decrees, and become specialists in all these complex lists, aid devices that no one understands anymore, not even the ministerial offices, so much has they become more complex over the weeks.
The fact is that the interpretations are sometimes different according to the departmental public finance directorates, which also struggle to keep pace.
Faced with so much confusion and anger, it is high time for the Government to learn to work with the elected officials and socio-professionals concerned.
We are asking for the creation of a mountain “
task force
”, which can quickly build and quickly put in place a mountain rescue plan.
It is urgent to quickly define a detailed and concrete plan to save our tourism businesses.