Evin Law, a Senate report proposes a revision of the law
June 19, 2020
Par: communication@cnct.fr
Dernière mise à jour: June 19, 2020
Temps de lecture: 3 minutes
The Senate's Culture, Education and Communication Committee published a report on Wednesday, June 17, devoted to studying the consequences of the health crisis in the sports sector, examining the modalities of deconfinement and proposing measures to support the economic recovery of the sector. Among these, the report suggests revisiting the Evin law on alcohol.[1].
The commission, chaired by Catherine Morin-Desailly (UDI/UC), proposes to "relax" the regulations in force in France, in particular by reauthorizing the sale of alcoholic beverages in sports venues, as well as advertising for certain alcoholic beverages. According to the report, this proposal would bring in between thirty and fifty million euros for professional clubs, which have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The working group proposes to revisit the authorization system that allows football clubs to sell alcohol to supporters only ten times a year, stressing that the channeling of violence observed in football stadiums no longer justifies the provisions of the Evin Law. Furthermore, this relaxation of sales and advertising would exclude group 4 alcohols, above 18°.
The Evin Law still constitutes today one of the cornerstones of public policies regulating alcohol and tobacco. For this reason, it remains one of the privileged targets of these two industries. In this respect, Anna B. Gilmore and her team demonstrate that the tobacco industry, and a fortiori that of alcohol systematically opposes public health policies as well as any form of regulation[2]In fact, any regulation that is in the interest of public health is likely to be subject to attempts at blocking, delaying or revising it by the industry.
[1] Committee on Culture, Education and Communication Conclusions of the Covid-19 “sport” working group, June 17, 2020.
[2] Anna B. Gilmore, “The Policy Dystopia Model: An Interpretive Analysis of Tobacco Industry Political Activity,” September 20, 2016
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002125
