The end of recess is whistled. A few days before the big return of summer terraces to the streets of Paris, scheduled for Friday April 1, restaurateurs are worried: few of them have received their authorization, and some have suffered a first refusal. The district town halls assume the tightening of screws.
Perpetuated each year between April 1 and October 31, summer terraces are now part of the Parisian landscape when the fine weather arrives. But this year, there is no question of letting the restaurateurs do anything, they will all have to respect the new Regulations for displays and terraces (RET) enacted on July 1, or will have to give up their terraces.
A reframing of elected officials in the field
Some borough town halls have even decided to go further, by introducing even more drastic rules than those of the RET. This is the case in the 9th, where Mayor Delphine Bürkli sent a letter on March 10 to all restaurateurs specifying the specific rules for summer terraces that they must respect in her arrondissement.
Among these, “no counter-terrace exceeding the width of the storefronts”, “no counter-terraces off-center or on the opposite side of the roadway”, “no terraces on the delivery zones (ZDL) in the streets at high commercial density”, and a “case-by-case treatment of spaces”.
Same observation on the Paris Center side, where all the restaurateurs on rue Montorgueil, for example, received a negative response to their request for a summer terrace. Only terraces already pre-existing to the health crisis and authorized year-round will therefore be released this summer.
“We had as many or even more requests than last year, but we granted a lot less,” concedes Raphaëlle Rémy-Leleu, who explains that the town hall of Paris Center, held by Ariel Weil, has indeed set up “new, even more precise regulations” for summer terraces.
And this, in particular in order to “prevent noise pollution”, “limit encroachments on the roadways” and “guarantee the circulation of pedestrians”, explains the elected EELV, who recalls that his district hosts the “highest concentration of terraces per km2 of Europe, or even of the world”.
For his colleague Nour Durand-Raucher, elected EELV in the 11th, “the lessons of last year’s experience have been learned”. Out of 650 requests for summer terraces, approximately 20% have already been refused and just as many have been returned to the sender, due to an incomplete file, he explains, admitting that the study of the files – very time-consuming for the district town halls – was still in progress.
Restaurateurs in the dark
A new method that deplores Frank Delvau, the president of the Union of hotel trades (Umih) Paris Ile-de-France. According to him, of the 12,000 summer terraces identified last year, barely 4,000 could obtain authorization this year. Many restaurateurs would not have received answers, less than two weeks before the opening of the season, and the others would have received negative answers.
Another injustice according to him: while Emmanuel Grégoire, the first deputy mayor of Paris, had assured that summer terraces could be installed “on a case-by-case basis” on delivery places provided that they were moved, Frank Delvau assures that this is not the case, since “all those who made the request received a negative response”.
Claiming to be “very dissatisfied” and feeling “cheated” when all requests should have been processed by March 15, this catering professional who claims to receive “many calls” from worried restaurateurs would like to at least obtain the figures for the number applications filed this year, as well as the positive or negative responses to them. “We are still waiting for the return. They are unable to give us any figures.