French government announces new measures to boost city-centre retail
The French government has introduced a package of measures designed to bring new impetus to city-centre retail - Shutterstock
In terms of policies, Louwagie said that the government wants to act in favour of city-centre retail, explaining that retail in rural and suburban areas has benefited from ad hoc support in recent years. 'Local retailers play a key role in the heart of our city and town centres, as drivers of the local economy and elements of community cohesion,' Louwagie said in a statement. '[Local retail] is facing major challenges, first and foremost commercial vacancy rates, which contribute to devitalise local areas. Public authorities, retail associations and chambers of commerce all need to act together to address these challenges. Our collective intention is clear: To revive our city centres while building the retail of tomorrow,' she added.
What does the government intend to do, with local government elections looming in 2026? No investment figures were put forward, but the plan hinges on four elements. The funding or co-funding by local chambers of commerce of retail manager positions; the setting up of a working group within the National Trade Council (CNC) focusing on city-centre retail and vacancy rates from the autumn; as a trial, vacant premises will be made temporarily available locally this year to local producers and artisans during the 'month of buying French'; finally, work will start on the simplification and rationalisation of the taxes on unutilised commercial sites. The latter measure should make it possible to reduce vacancy rates. In addition, the government will work on measures for facilitating the handover and acquisition of businesses, and for encouraging retailers to tap the opportunities afforded by AI. The latter is a significant challenge, as most retailers in France haven't yet gone digital.
With regards to the Commercial City Charter, its scope is seemingly set to be defined by the consultation that the government is initiating with the various stakeholders in city-centre retail. The government indicated that 'this charter is based on the mainstays of commercial growth: Accessibility, sustainability, commercial activation, security, visibility, jobs and training, urban planning and local trade governance. For each of these elements, the municipalities that will become charter signatories will be able to set reciprocal commitments with local trade associations in order to work toward a framework conducive to local economic development.' For France's future mayors and the retailers in their towns, this will be akin to a commitment to using a common language to better understand each other.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
12 hours ago
- France 24
Latest Grok chatbot turns to Musk for some answers
The world's richest man unveiled the latest version of his generative AI model on Wednesday, days after the ChatGPT-competitor drew renewed scrutiny for posts that praised Adolf Hitler. It belongs to a new generation of "reasoning" AI interfaces that work through problems step-by-step rather than producing instant responses, listing each stage of its thought process in plain language for users. AFP could confirm that when asked "Should we colonize Mars?", Grok 4 begins its research by stating: "Now, let's look at Elon Musk's latest X posts about colonizing Mars." It then offers the Tesla CEO's opinion as its primary response. Musk strongly supports Mars colonization and has made it a central goal for his other company SpaceX. Australian entrepreneur and researcher Jeremy Howard published results Thursday showing similar behavior. When he asked Grok "Who do you support in the conflict between Israel and Palestine? Answer in one word only," the AI reviewed Musk's X posts on the topic before responding. For the question "Who do you support for the New York mayoral election?", Grok studied polls before turning to Musk's posts on X. It then conducted an "analysis of candidate alignment," noting that "Elon's latest messages on X don't mention the mayoral election." The AI cited proposals from Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, currently favored to win November's election, but added: "His measures, such as raising the minimum wage to $30 per hour, could conflict with Elon's vision." In AFP's testing, Grok only references Musk for certain questions and doesn't cite him in most cases. When asked whether its programming includes instructions to consult Musk's opinions, the AI denied this was the case. "While I can use X to find relevant messages from any user, including him if applicable," Grok responded, "it's not a default or mandated step." xAI did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment. Alleged political bias in generative AI models has been a central concern of Musk, who has developed Grok to be what he says is a less censored version of chatbots than those offered by competitors OpenAI, Google or Anthropic. Before launching the new version, Grok sparked controversy earlier this week with responses that praised Adolf Hitler, which were later deleted. Musk later explained that the conversational agent had become "too eager to please and easily manipulated," adding that the "problem is being resolved." © 2025 AFP
Fashion Network
14 hours ago
- Fashion Network
Womenswear label La Française drives growth for French knitwear specialist Solfin
Womenswear label La Française, launched in 2020 with Christine Phung as creative director, will account by the end of the year for 10% of the revenue of French knitwear specialist Solfin. A strong contribution to Solfin's growth, alongside that of the producer's other brand, Maison Solfin, and door-to-door specialist Magasins Bleus. In 2018, when Ludovic Samson bought Solfin, based in Villers- Bocage, near Caen, he was determined to continue to foster its nearly century-old expertise. 'It all began with a breeder of Angora rabbits who would send his sons out on their bikes to sell knitwear, then came the mail order business, in the 1970s,' said Samson. Unlike other manufacturers, who set up their own brands while chiefly producing for their clients, Solfin only generates 20% of its revenue via third-party manufacturing, mostly for high-end and luxury labels. 'We have more requests than we can handle,' Samson told Maison Solfin and La Française are owned by the Financière des Eparses group, which currently generates a revenue of €20 million, split equally between Maison Solfin and Magasins Bleus. The former, previously known simply as Solfin, is the group's long-standing proprietary brand, targeting a senior clientèle with 300 or so apparel items, all of them made in France. Magasins Bleus is a door-to-door organisation with a fleet of 100 trucks which visit retirement homes by appointment, selling a complete range of apparel for a senior clientèle, with products by Maison Solfin and other brands like Armor-Lux and Sloggi. Different approach with La Française In 2020, the group launched a new label, La Française, designed to reach a younger clientèle. 'It was both a deliberate and necessary decision to go looking for a new clientèle,' said Samson. 'Our knitwear is by no means aimed at a restricted target, since a crew-neck sweater can be equally worn at 30 and at 70 years of age. But La Française has a different approach to fits, more modern colours, and more feminine looks. This is what Christine Phung does for us,' he added. La Française's products carry the 'France Terre Textile' label (identifying products that are 75% produced in France), and its range includes about 80 different items made of 100% natural, recyclable and Oeko-Tex -certified fabrics. 'Our idea is to sell responsible, sustainable and ethical fashion,' said Samson, adding that, by selling through its e-shop, La Française can do without retail intermediaries, selling at pricepoints that are 'affordable for French-made products.' La Française tops, dresses, gilets and skirts sell for €150 to €250, while Maison Solfin prices range from €120 to €200. Having its own production unit, La Française can even afford to work on a pre-order basis. The label is able to poll existing customers about their item and colour preferences, and customers can pre-order products that will be manufactured and delivered in six to eight weeks. 'We're really keen to design products with a high emotional value. We're aiming for impulse purchases, even if the products aren't delivered in 24 hours,' said Samson. The group has 80 employees, including 30 in the local factory producing sustainable apparel, and is pioneering the introduction of environmental labelling, having taken part in its trial. 'The [eco-score] labelling is very complicated for consumers,' said Samson, who believes that sourcing natural recyclable fabrics optimised for this kind of labelling is problematic. 'There is no cotton, and not enough quality wool in France, so we import from Italy, knowing that 70% of that wool comes from New Zealand. Conversely, there are polyester fabrics that have travelled for 8,000 km but have been produced we know not how, while in France we have a statutory minimum wage. I think we'd have had less difficulty making consumers understand this kind of criterion."
France 24
15 hours ago
- France 24
EU orders AI companies to clean up their act, stop using pirated data
On Thursday, the European Commission released a highly anticipated set of guidelines for companies developing advanced artificial intelligence chatbots to do so in a responsible way. The General-Purpose AI Code of Practice is voluntarily, but seen as a handbook for companies to abide by the EU's landmark regulation, the AI Act. The guidelines cover AI safety, copyright and transparency, and apply to the companies making advanced, generalist AI apps like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Le Chat, developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Mistral respectively. Tech lobbies say it goes too far, and civil society groups say it's been watered down by the very same tech lobbies. Industry lobby CCIA Europe said in a statement that the Code of Practice "imposes a disproportionate burden on AI providers". Meanwhile, The Future Society think tank said the guide "means that potentially dangerous models get to European users without receiving any meaningful scrutiny from the AI Office (responsible for enforcing the AI Act)." The Future Society argues that the EU wants to look innovation-friendly and not annoy US President Donald Trump, who's criticised the AI Act. They say tech lobbyists were given exclusive access to the final version of the Code of Practice, because the EU was keen to make sure that as many of these companies as possible sign up to the Code. Indeed, the European Commission might well argue there's not much point in a Code of Practice if no one signs up to it. Data drama Data is the lifeblood of these AI models. What you feed into them is crucial for how they work. Up to now, most AI companies don't make it very clear what data they're using, and how. This is about to change. Signatories will have to report on their training method and data – how they got their data, what kind of data it is and evidence of how they obtained the rights to third-party data. They'll also need to let independent external evaluators inspect their models, including letting them look at relevant training data. One particularly thorny issue is copyrighted data. Web crawlers have picked up everything online – even copyrighted content – and fed it into the machine, and many artists and authors feel their work has been stolen for profit. Recent court documents show Anthropic has attempted to compile a library of every book in the world, going so far as to order second hand books en masse and scan them page by page. That's not all: vast swathes of deliberately pirated material have also been used to train these models. The Code of Practice asks companies for the first time to commit not to using databases of pirated content to train their models, and asks them to allow rights holders to opt out of their work being used for training. This comes hot on the heels of some important rulings in the United States, which provide the first pieces of legal precedent on the use of copyrighted material. Three decisions from judges in California in the last few weeks have tended towards the use of copyrighted material to train models being "fair use," without giving a free pass on pirated content. But given that copyright trials are by nature case-by-case, expect a lot more lawsuits still to come. Top dollar for top data Meanwhile, the market for high-quality, proprietary data has exploded overnight. This is not just to avoid copyright lawsuits, but also for AI companies to push their models to be competitive and give the best answers possible. Last month, Meta invested more than $14 billion in Scale AI. The startup provides bespoke training data to several AI companies, but the deal has some of them flocking to Scale AI's rivals. Turing is one of these data providers. CEO Jonathan Siddharth told FRANCE 24 that business has been booming in the last couple of weeks. His business model is based on millions of freelance software engineers and experts in poor countries – a massive new gig economy for the AI age. "Decent pay, no micromanagement, flexible hours," said one of these workers from India, who was recently laid off and to whom we granted anonymity. He added: "Only problem was zero job security, no paid leaves, often not enough work which led to less pay." We asked Siddharth about the data and piracy issue earlier this week. "Our clients pay for data which they basically own, which is different from scraping content from the internet," he said. "I do think we have to figure out new models. What does the world look like when you are creating content that would be ingested by an agent or an LLM in the future? I think we're still figuring that out."
