This time last year, café owners would not have believed that in just 12 months, France's café culture could be completely brought to its knees, with an average of two establishments closing down every day. The main factor in the abandonment of the traditional café is due to the smoking ban, which was brought into force on 1st January 2008. Since then, owners are describing their businesses as being in “freefall”.

The end of an era

The introduction of a crackdown on drink driving by President Nicholas Sarkozy means that often there are police outside café bars during the night, ready to breathalise anyone intending on driving home after having a drink.

Daniel Perrey, 57, owner of the Café du Crucifix in Crimolois. He laments the passing of a social tradition: “Sadly, it is the end to a way of life. The culture is changing, and we feel it. We need the cafe to have an equilibrium between the village and the world outside. Without the cafe, you lose the conviviality. You lose your mates. Business agreements are made behind the zinc (the bar)...What is a village but a cafe, a school, a pharmacy, a bakery and a city hall?”

It could be said that the downturn in business caused by the smoking ban was foreseen at the beginning of the year when the ban was introduced. Certainly, cafe owners were becoming worried at the time that the era of the long, relaxed lunch over bottles of wine, cigarettes and good food, was over.

Olivier Colombe, 43, owner of Parisian cafés Le Panier and Le Faitout said at the time: "All my customers smoke, all my employees smoke. What are we going to do?" Colombe also foresaw work getting harder for his staff, as impatient customers would no longer have cigarettes to occupy them until their food or drinks arrived.

Fumes still permeating

Despite the discontent from the vocal few punters, however, 66% of the smoking public were said to have been in support of the law when it was introduced. The goal of the law was certainly altruistic in its attempt to shield non-smokers from the fumes of other customers, however in a report written by the French non-smokers association, DNF, the fact that the doors to designated smoking areas are constantly left open means that the air within the busier cafés is generally as smoky and stuffy as before!

Gérard Audureau, president of the anti-passive smoking association, claims that "the benefits of the smoking ban in public places are cancelled out by the existence of smoking terraces, whether these are simply covered or entirely closed."

Daniel Desrosiers of the non-smokers association added that: "The problem is that most establishments have built heated, totally closed smoking areas in front of their façades. They are breaking the law."