“The first financial penalties were sent this morning,” Emmanuel Grégoire announced at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon. The two “dark stores” in question belong to the Flink group and are located rue Le Peletier (9th arrondissement) and rue de Brunel (17th). Two other establishments will follow, rue de la Vistule (13th) and rue Rémy-Dumoncel (14th). For the first two, the penalty is 200 euros per day within the limit of a total ceiling of 25,000 euros. And this decision was taken to compensate for the “slowness of justice” according to the first deputy.
As a reminder, it has been a long year since “dark stores” have been established in the capital, often in former commercial premises, at the foot of apartment buildings, to be closer to customers. Except that the town hall considers these activities of delivery of consumer goods as logistics and that the “dark stores” must make a request to change the destination of the premises. Which also has a good chance of being refused because the PLU prohibits warehouses at the foot of apartment buildings. And it is because of this non-declaration of the change of destination that the town hall decided to send administrative penalties.
80% of “dark stores” are illegal according to the town hall
Today, according to the count of the town hall, a few hundred “dark stores” are established in Paris, “after a peak of 150” of which “80% are illegal”, according to Emmanuel Grégoire. In total, “47 procedures have been launched, 24 of which are still in progress”, specifies the first deputy. But, and this explains the delays between reports from local residents and penalties, the procedures are long: registered letter with compliance, dispatch of a sworn inspector to draw up the report, return of a notification, initiation of legal proceedings for violation of the Town Planning Code then sends it to the Paris prosecutor who then deals with it. At the same time, and after a certain period, the town hall can trigger administrative penalties.
A long-term fight, therefore, in which the first deputy was heavily involved in “reasons of the crazy nuisances” generated by these “dark stores” and the “dozens of complaint emails from local residents” that he receives. But also because “it is a model that contravenes our vision of the city, carrying a danger for the social bond while we try to do everything to keep our businesses active”.
“Let them not expect any help from me”
Emmanuel Grégoire is all the more involved as “these people behaved like cowboys”. “I reached out to them but they refused it when they don’t expect any help from me,” he says. We are going to meet the operators but we are not going to offer them the slightest solution. The elected official criticizes the companies behind the “dark stores” for having deliberately ignored the town planning rules in the hope of a posteriori regularization by the government thanks to “big red lobbying that stains Bercy” ( see box).
As a result of this “arm wrestling”, two actors decided to attack the town hall, “and it’s a good thing” affirms, bravado, the first deputy. “Ten proceedings have been brought, 6 by Gorillas and 4 by Frichti, 9 for contesting the minutes and one for a refusal by the town hall to change destination, but I will be very very surprised if we are not given reason” , adds confidently Emmanuel Grégoire. He also says he is almost sure that the administrative penalties will be challenged before the administrative justice. The war between the “dark stores” and the Marie de Paris is far from over.
“Big red staining lobbying”?
“The” dark stores “hoped for an ex post cleaning up of the law,” says Emmanuel Grégoire. With this argument: we are urban logistics activities but as we plan to set up collection points, we have a commercial vocation. But for the town hall of Paris, a collection point is not enough to prove the commercial nature. Except that in the middle of the summer, the Department of Housing, Urbanism and Landscape, of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, worked on an order providing that the presence of a collection point would justify a character commercial. “This is exactly what the “dark stores” were waiting for, which obviously won their case with Bercy, believes the first deputy. But this caused an outcry from the local authorities who mobilized to modify the draft decree. And Emmanuel Grégoire claims to have won his case on this decree, the publication of which is imminent and which, according to him, must resume “the rule of the Parisian PLU”.