It is a battle that begins in the middle of the war against the coronavirus. Do non-food businesses have to pay their rents to large property companies, the owners of shopping centers in particular, when they have been closed for more than a month? No, answered this Friday at the microphone of "The eco interview" of Europe 1 Laurent Milchior, co-manager of the Etam group. "We are not going to pay them, and we are going to negotiate hard."
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"Legally", Etam is certain "not to owe his rents"
Especially since "we are legally certain not to owe these rents," he said. "If the property companies want to have open players in their shopping centers, it must be free!" Because the "real problem" caused by the closure of the 1,397 group stores is not the payment of wages, "thanks to the remarkable partial unemployment" put in place by the government, but indeed "the payment of rents" advances the co-manager, who specifies that it costs "37 million euros per quarter" to the Etam group.
This is why, long before the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire mentioned it on Thursday evening for some very small businesses, Laurent Milchior asked its owners not to weigh on Etam's finances this cost. This is all the more important in that during a period of containment, the group's turnover is limited to sales on the Internet, i.e. 10% of the total in normal times. "We have 90% losses on a turnover of around one billion euros," he said. Or a "Covid loss" around "300 million euros for the group".
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The weight of the "land lobby" and the "contempt" of the government
If the executive has not yet taken control of this file, it is "because there is contempt on the part of the government and on the part of these large real estate companies of the 2.6 million jobs in non-food trade, "he denounces. Before going even further: "When the state controls its land, it accepts free rents because it knows that the traders cannot get out of it. But the lobby [of the land] does [so ] that the government, Bruno Le Maire and Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, dare not impose it. "
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Just a question of common sense? We must not forget that the big real estate companies continue to pay their loans, entrusts one of them to Europe 1. Not to mention that some are making efforts, like the real estate company of the Auchan group which decided to cancel rents from March 15 to May 15. For the time being, the most important reserve their response, while the National Council of Shopping Centers (CNCC) has for its part refused any generalized measure.