05-03-2025
French MP plans to make it easier to run cafés in smaller communes
We've been here before. In 2019 then-Prime Minister Edouard Philippe launched 'Operation 1,000 cafés', inviting rural villages with populations of less than 3,500 and with few facilities to bid for funds to create a local hub.
The latest effort is simple and direct.
La République en marche MP and former civil service minister Guillaume Kasbarian has proposed one single measure that he believes will help villages with fewer than 3,500 inhabitants to revitalise their communities: making it – temporarily – simple to obtain a liquor licence.
Under the bill, anyone planning to open a bar in an affected community would only need to make a declaration to the local mayor to obtain a Licence IV, which allows them to sell strong alcohol.
Under current rules, it is not possible to obtain a new licence. Potential bar owners have to acquire an existing one, after undergoing training to win an operating licence.
In the explanatory memorandum, Kasbarian stated: 'The devitalisation of rural areas has seen the number of cafés and bistros in France fall from 200,000 in 1960 to 38,800 in 2023.
'Administrative regulations may have contributed to the phenomenon by making it very difficult to transfer licences IV or by imposing heavy constraints on the opening of new drinking establishments.'
As a result, he argued, 'the specific situation of rural municipalities now justifies the implementation of radically simplified conditions to encourage the settlement of populations and economic activity there.'
The old licence regulations will remain in place for towns and cities, or any community that has more than 3,500 inhabitants.
