" Disproportionate " . For UNIMEV, the Prime Minister's announcement to reintroduce gauges for large-scale events is not going down well. " In a year and a half of crisis, we've never seen a measure like this, and it's a major step forward. sudden and disproportionate" said Renaud Hamaide and Pierre-Louis Roucaries, co-presidents of UNIMEV. From 3 January, and for a period of three weeks, gatherings will be limited to 2,000 people indoors and 5,000 outdoors. Exhibitions and trade fairs, congresses and corporate events, as well as sporting events: a number of activities will be particularly affected by these restrictions.
The meteoric spread of the Omicron variant, combined with the still active spread of the Delta variant - almost 180,000 cases reported on 27 December alone - the events sector is once again suffering the consequences of the measures taken to combat the pandemic. While these measures do not mean a complete halt to the business, they do undermine the need for visibility in an industry for which " the recurring stop and go is unmanageable" according to UNIMEV.
Since December and the first signs of this fifth wave, the events industry has seen a serious slowdown in its recovery. Event cancellations are adding to requests for postponements. The association La Clé-Collective des Lieux Événementiels predicted that over 1,000 events would be cancelled in December. For January, the figures are 130 events cancelledAccording to UNIMEV, this has resulted in a loss of sales of around one billion euros.
This is why the trade association is calling for support to enable the sector to overcoming economic difficulties which it will still have to face. Among the measures requested are exemption from employer contributions and assistance with the payment of employee contributions from December 2021 and one quarter after the takeover, the introduction of partial activity with no remaining costs, with an eligibility threshold of a maximum of 50 % of lost turnover, and non-discrimination between SMEs and ETIs, which have hitherto been excluded from the measures. Another request was for coverage of loss of earnings with retroactivity and continuity one quarter after the recovery, as Italy has already put in place.
