Latest news with #FabienDiFilippo
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
French lawmakers seek to bring back village bars
Lawmakers in France have overwhelmingly backed a bill making it easier to open bars in villages - a move aimed at reviving social life in small rural communities. In a 156-2 vote on Monday, MPs decided to loosen strict restrictions on new bar permits to sell alcohol. The bill still needs a Senate approval to become law. Supporters say the change is needed to better cement social ties and reduce isolation - but critics warn of health risks through alcoholism. France has seen a sharp fall from about 200,000 bars and cafés serving alcohol in the 1960 to some 36,000 by 2015. Most of the closures were in rural areas. In France, a type-4 alcohol licence is required by law to open a bar selling alcoholic drinks, including hard spirits with more than 18% alcohol. Currently, no new such permits can be granted, and those planning to open a bar must wait until an existing drinking spot closes to acquire its licence. The new legislation would allow prospective bar managers in communities with fewer than 3,500 people and without a bar to request a brand-new permit without such a wait. Local mayors would have the final say on whether to approve or deny such requests. Lawmaker Guillaume Kasbarian said "an old and obsolete legal framework" should be replaced, the AFP news agency reported. It also quoted Fabien Di Filippo, another French MP, who described bars as "above all, places for people to come together in very rural areas and in a society where people have a tendency to close in on themselves". The French health ministry says that each year about 49,000 deaths in the country are caused by alcohol consumption, describing this as a "major public health issue".
BBC News
11-03-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
French lawmakers seek to bring back village bars
Lawmakers in France have overwhelmingly backed a bill making it easier to open bars in villages - a move aimed at reviving social life in small rural a 156-2 vote on Monday, MPs decided to loosen strict restrictions on new bar permits to sell alcohol. The bill still needs a Senate approval to become say the change is needed to better cement social ties and reduce isolation - but critics warn of health risks through has seen a sharp fall from about 200,000 bars and cafés serving alcohol in the 1960 to some 36,000 by 2015. Most of the closures were in rural areas. In France, a type-4 alcohol licence is required by law to open a bar selling alcoholic drinks, including hard spirits with more than 18% no new such permits can be granted, and those planning to open a bar must wait until an existing drinking spot closes to acquire its new legislation would allow prospective bar managers in communities with fewer than 3,500 people and without a bar to request a brand-new permit without such a mayors would have the final say on whether to approve or deny such requests. Lawmaker Guillaume Kasbarian said "an old and obsolete legal framework" should be replaced, the AFP news agency also quoted Fabien Di Filippo, another French MP, who described bars as "above all, places for people to come together in very rural areas and in a society where people have a tendency to close in on themselves".The French health ministry says that each year about 49,000 deaths in the country are caused by alcohol consumption, describing this as a "major public health issue".
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
French parliament adopts bill to bring back village bars
French lawmakers Monday adopted a bill making it easier to open a bar in villages without one, with backers saying it would revive rural socialising, but critics warning of health risks. France had some 200,000 cafes in 1960, often serving as the social centre of gravity for communities around the country. By 2015, that number had fallen to just 36,000, with most closures in rural areas, according to a 2017 report from the France Boissons industry body and the CREDOC consumer studies agency. The new legislation, which would loosen strict restrictions on new bar permits to sell hard liquor, does away with "an old and obsolete legal framework," said the centrist lawmaker behind the bill, Guillaume Kasbarian. He and other lawmakers argued the change was needed to bring back cafes and bars to remote countryside areas, thus cementing social ties, boosting local economies and creating jobs. The drinking spots in question "are, above all, places for people to come together in very rural areas and in a society where people have a tendency to close in on themselves," one parliamentarian, Fabien Di Filippo, said. Under French law, a type-4 alcohol licence in a bar or bistro allows the consumption of alcoholic beverages, including those containing more than 18 percent alcohol, such as spirits. But no new such permit can be created, and aspiring bar managers must often wait until another type-4 bar closes permanently to acquire their licence from them. The new legislation would allow cafe owners in rural municipalities with less than 3,500 inhabitants that do not already have a type-4 bar to request a brand-new permit instead of waiting for an old one to become free. The local mayor would have the right to approve -- or deny -- the request. The measure was adopted nearly unanimously by the French parliament, with 156 lawmakers backing it and just two voting against. It now has to be approved by the Senate. - Additional bar - While the original idea of the bill was to allow just one type-4 bar to open in a village lacking one, an amendment added by the centre-right MoDem party gave municipal authorities the power to approve one additional bar. It is difficult to estimate how many villages could benefit from the law, but 31,000 out of 35,000 rural municipalities have fewer than 3,500 inhabitants, according to the association of French mayors. Detractors of the bill fear a rise in alcohol consumption in areas where social services to help people fight addiction are not readily available. They have questioned why the law needs to allow the consumption of spirits in villages, and why a type-3 licence that allows the selling of beer and wine is not sufficient. Some lawmakers also expressed concern the new legislation might be broadened in the future to allow bigger villages or towns to authorise more bars selling spirits. Supporters have said the measure is important to draw residents out of isolation, and that hard liquor is available for sale at nearby supermarkets anyway. Alcohol causes 49,000 deaths each year, according to the French health ministry's website. sac-ah/sjw-rmb/gv
El Chorouk
26-01-2025
- Politics
- El Chorouk
French Parliament Targets Algerian Retirees Once Again
Coinciding with the diplomatic crisis with France and the far right's frenzied campaign against Algeria and its community members, the French National Assembly joined the bandwagon through the ongoing discussions on the new social security financing bill targeting Algerian retirees, who will likely face new complicated procedures to obtain their pensions. In this context, an amendment bearing the number 'AS 90', submitted as part of the draft on financing social security, after the fall of the text of the previous finance law, following the overthrow of the government of Michel Barnier, submitted by the deputy Fabien Di Filippo, from the Republican right, stated that retirees outside the territory of the French Republic must appear in person every year before the French consular authorities or any natural or legal person accredited by the French diplomatic missions. The amendment added that the process must follow the conditions stipulated in a decree issued by the Council of State, stressing that if this condition is not met, the pension will be immediately suspended. In justifying the proposed amendment, the right-wing MP stated that according to the latest figures from the National Elderly Insurance Fund, around one million pensioners benefit from French pensions while living outside the country, more than half of them outside Europe. He added that according to the Court of Auditors, the risk of fraud in old-age benefits concerns particularly pensions paid to people living abroad, due to 'the risk of concealing deaths or declaring them later', representing a financial amount of 9 billion euros. The same MP claimed that as part of a special program launched by the government in 2022 in Algiers to verify the presence of retirees approaching the age of a century, nearly 30% of the 1,000 people over the age of 98 who were summoned did not show up, which led to the suspension of their pensions. Under this amendment, thousands of Algerian retirees will have to travel hundreds of kilometres to the three French consulates in Algiers, Oran and Constantine to prove that they are alive, and thus continue to receive their retirement pensions, knowing that the vast majority of them are elderly and suffer from chronic diseases. A similar amendment had been approved in the previous law, the text of which was dropped after the overthrow of Prime Minister Michel Barnier, but the French right returned this time trying to introduce this amendment to the Social Security Financing Law. As is known, French consulates used to call some elderly retirees in particular, to verify if they are alive, especially those who are over 85 years old and still receiving their pension, while the rest are satisfied with sending a life certificate issued by the civil services in the municipality of residence at least once a year. A previous report by the French National Assembly revealed that 405,351 Algerian retirees residing in the country receive pensions from various French funds, representing more than 100 million euros per month and 1.2 billion euros per year. According to the same report, Algerians come first in terms of the nationalities of beneficiaries of French retirement pensions residing in their country of origin, followed by Portugal with about 174,000 retirees, Spain with 175,000, and Morocco with 65,000.
