These kitchens and stores which intend their products to be delivered are debating, between nuisances, competition and precarious working conditions.
Elected officials from large cities, mostly on the left, ask in a letter to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to be able to regulate “dark blinds” and “dark kitchens», these premises dedicated to the preparation of deliveries which have multiplied since 2020.
The mail that AFP has obtained must be sent Friday or Saturday to the head of government, it was specified in the entourage of a signatory mayor. “We wish (…) that the municipalities where this type of activity thrives have the legal means to regulate them and to fight effectively against all the negative externalities that they produce.“, write the elected officials. They denounce, among other things, the nuisance inflicted on the inhabitants, the increased competition for traders and the precarious working conditions of delivery people.
SEE ALSO – Dark stores: what is it?
Shops or warehouses?
The first signatories of the letter are the socialists Anne Hidalgo (Paris), Benoît Payan (Marseille), Martine Aubry (Lille) and Cédric Van Syvendael (Villeurbanne), the ecologists Bruno Bernard and Grégory Doucet (Lyon), Anne Vignot (Besançon), Pierre Hurmic (Bordeaux) and Jeanne Barseghian (Strasbourg), the communist Patrice Bessac (Montreuil), and two elected LRs, the president of the Métropole du Grand Paris Patrick Ollier and that of the Association of Mayors of Ile-de-France Stephane Beaudet.
Read alsoBattle between mayors and the government around the “dark blinds»
Embodiments of thequick trade» which allows products to be ordered online and delivered in a few minutes, the «dark blinds” and “dark kitchens» have multiplied in the heart of metropolises, thanks to successive confinements and curfews. The first store everyday consumer products while the second are kitchens not attached to a restaurant, only intended for the delivery of dishes.
At the heart of the controversy, a draft decree which, in a provisional version unveiled by the Parisian deputy for urban planning Emmanuel Grégoire, would allow these premises to be considered as places of commerce and crafts, provided that they have a collection point for the public. These modifications “would pose the risk to the municipalities we represent of seeing these establishments multiply in our territories which, even with a reception desk, would nevertheless remain warehouses or opaque kitchens“, support the signatories. The executive promised on Thursday to “continue the consultationwith the stakeholders, and the Minister Delegate for Cities and Housing Olivier Klein said he was in favor of the mayors being able to “ban, or not, a dark store in a neighborhood“.