Fancy a drink? French lawmakers adopt bill to bring back bars in rural areas

If you were to imagine a village in the French countryside in the 1960s, there would probably be a bar – or bistrot in French – somewhere between the boulangerie and the post office. Today, chances are none of these three places would be there.

In an attempt to tackle the economic decline of rural areas, the French National Assembly passed a bill on Monday making it easier to open bars in villages of fewer than 3,500 inhabitants that do not have any.

Proponents of the bill say it is a way to revitalise these areas, in a country where two thirds of towns no longer have any local shops.

The law would give bars in small towns the power to sell hard liquor through a simple declaration of the mayor, loosening existing regulations.

It is currently impossible to create brand new hard liquor licences in France. A café can only serve alcoholic beverages stronger than wine and beer if another local bar agrees to let go of its own licence, and the transfer must be authorised by authorities.

For Guillaume Kasbarian, the lawmaker behind the law, this legal framework is “obsolete.” Cafés “help to maintain and sometimes even restore a sense of community. Every French person should have access to them, wherever they live”, he said in the National Assembly. “Having a drink at a café cannot become an urban privilege.”

Kasbarian, who belongs to the centre-right presidential party and was until recently France’s Minister of Civil Service, also said bringing back village bars would help boost local economies and create jobs in rural areas.

Lawmakers also adopted an amendment that would prevent these new licences from being sold to bars in other towns, in order to avoid speculation.

The number of bars in France went from 200,000 to 35,000 over the last 50 years, a figure that could also be linked to a decreasing alcohol consumption in the country.

The bill was passed almost unanimously despite concerns from the left and several associations over health risks. Alcohol causes 49,000 deaths each in France, according to the Health Ministry.

Ahead of the vote on Monday, the French Society of Public Health had criticised “the idea that the development of community ties, in rural areas as elsewhere, should be based on the opening bars with alcoholic drinks licences, rather than on providing social, educative or cultural services and activities.”

The bill still has to go through the Senate to come into effect.