The nightclub owners gave a big “phew” of relief this Thursday evening. Closed since December 10 because deemed conducive to contamination by Covid-19 – as elsewhere in Europe for months – nightclubs will reopen on February 16 and consuming standing in bars will again be authorized, announced Prime Minister Jean Castex during a press conference.
“The profession is super relieved”, governed with AFP Thierry Fontaine, president of the night branch of the main hotel and catering union, Umih. “Finally measures that hold water: there is consistency, we finally feel respected, listened to,” he continues. “We are not going to ignore the pleasure of finally reopening… but what a waste: closing ourselves did not prevent us from having a number of contaminations never seen before. We were ultra-stigmatized as an ultra-dangerous place, but to close us was to try to stop a tsunami with a sandbag, ”said Mathieu Lebrun, manager of the Le Milton nightclub in Baudre (Manche), which employs 12 employees.
According to Mathieu Lebrun, the aid “commensurate with the difficulties” promised by the government is not there: the “fixed cost” system with 100% coverage of operating losses in December and January , “pays a few bills” but will be insufficient in particular for the discotheques of the ski resorts, which sometimes make half of their annual turnover in December, against 20% on average.
For the time being, only 80 aid application files have been submitted, out of 1,534 nightclubs in France (some only opening in the summer), Bercy told professionals. Discotheques also benefit from partial unemployment without remaining dependents and from assistance with the payment of social security contributions announced on Tuesday. “There are so many little lines (in the aid request forms, editor’s note) that very few of us are entitled to them,” Carl Hautbois, head of Gossip in Vitré (Ille-et-Vilaine) told AFP. ) which has 36 employees, a company “very healthy before the Covid” but with a cash flow that is now exhausted.
No negative test imposed on customers
Professionals were especially delighted on Thursday to learn that a negative test of less than 24 hours will not be requested from their customers in addition to the vaccination pass, as in Germany: they saw it as a real sword of Damocles, for a sector which was making a billion euros in revenue in 2019 and has 22,000 employees – plus 23,000 security guards. “The law allows us to do this”, declared the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, “but we do not have the ambition to do it, in any case not in the state”. However “if ever the decision were to change, once again, be careful (…) you never know what could happen, but that is the current intention,” he said.
Indeed, the bill strengthening the tools for managing the health crisis, adopted on Sunday in Parliament, provides that in certain circumstances to be defined by decree, it may be required in the name of “the interest of public health” the presentation cumulative proof of vaccination status and a negative test, to access certain establishments. “In Switzerland, it was a disaster for our colleagues,” reports nightclub owner Carl Hautbois. As for whether or not wearing a mask is compulsory inside nightclubs, the minister said it would depend on the epidemic situation.
According to Sacem, which collects copyright for the music broadcast by these establishments, 82 nightclubs had filed for bankruptcy and 131 had been placed in compulsory liquidation in March 2021 (the latest figures available).