Paris (AFP)

Le Figaro plans to cut 60 jobs to achieve 4 million euros in savings per year on the payroll and invest more in digital, told AFP the group's general manager Marc Feuillée, confirming information from Le Monde .

The plan presented Thursday morning during an extraordinary corporate social and economic committee (CSE) is "linked to the decline in printed editions" of the daily and its magazines for the benefit of online consumption, explained Mr. Feuillée.

"This erosion has existed for several years but it was accentuated at the time of confinement", he added, specifying that the Figaro will cross "the bar of 200,000 purely digital subscribers in a few weeks".

In detail, according to the press release of an inter-union (CFDT, CFTC, CFE-CGC, CGT, SNJ), 6 editorial positions are targeted, including three in the Sport service (out of ten holders) and three in Figaroscope (on around twenty in the culture department), sectors particularly affected by the health crisis.

There are also 24 positions among the executives and employees of "industrial management, documentation, syndication, communication and distribution" and 15 in "editorial and publishing secretariats, iconographic services" and "models".

Fifteen positions could also be subject to voluntary departures, according to the unions, which are also worried about the fate of sixty freelancers.

At the same time, 17 positions will be created "exclusively on the development of our digital offers", including 12 for journalists, underlined Mr. Feuillée, defending a development "essential and common sense to face the modification of uses".

Especially since the group suffered "exceptional losses" with the liquidation of Presstalis and suffered the decline in advertising revenue linked to confinement, he added, without giving a figure.

The CSE, suspended after four hours, must continue on Friday morning, according to union sources.

The fate of the Sport service has particularly caused a reaction, the delegate of the SNJ (national union of journalists) Patrick Bèle denouncing in particular to AFP the "editorial inconsistency" of a reduction of posts while the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Olympic Games are to be held in France.

For Mr. Feuillée, this is an "extremely limited" drop for a newspaper whose "editorial offer on sport (is) much greater than that of its generalist colleagues".

The group employs around 850 people, including 450 journalists.

In 2019, a social plan had already concerned around thirty journalists, after a precedent in 2018 relating to around fifty technical service employees.

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