This measure taken in the name of ecology with the aim of reducing the production of waste, also concerns bank card tickets and purchase vouchers. Initially due to come into force on January 1, 2023, it had once more been postponed to April 1.
But citing the inflationary context, the government had once once more postponed the deadline to the end of March, without immediately advancing a new date. It will therefore finally be August 1, according to a decree published on Saturday in the Official Journal.
Last Sunday, the cabinet of Olivia Grégoire, Minister Delegate for Trade, assured that the new postponement did not call “in any way into question the merits of this common sense measure” but was a “pragmatic” decision, adapted to the inflationary “context”.
“When you have inflation at 15% on the shelves, when the receipt is a benchmark for many French people, it seemed important to us to keep this benchmark” the time to “pass the inflationary peak”, he argued. .
The end of the systematic printing of receipts at the end of a commercial transaction – unless explicitly requested by the customer – stems from the “anti-waste and circular economy” law, passed in 2020.
The measure aims to reduce the production of waste, while nearly 30 billion tickets are printed each year in France.
But faced with the waltz in prices, especially for food products in supermarkets, many consumers continue to frequently consult their receipt to check the details of their shopping.
“Not practical”
“It saves money, it’s good for the planet, I know … But for my accounts, looking all the time on the internet, it’s not practical”, complained Jean-Claude Glissant, a forty-something questioned recently by AFP at the exit of the E.Leclerc hypermarket in Pantin, in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Lucia Freixeda, 62 and not yet retired, showed her own receipt. “There is an error there, you see? On the terminal inside the store, it was marked 1.99 euros, and there it is 2.99 euros”, she explained. When the tickets will no longer be automatically offered by the shops, she will “ask for them anyway”.
In Toulouse, in a central district, the idea of receiving his ticket electronically made Ahmed Sessi, 74, smile, who considered himself “too old to understand how it works”.
According to Perifem, an association that brings together players in the distribution around energy or environmental issues, the French are “still more than half to say they want to ask for a ticket in paper format”.
Its general delegate, Franck Charton, had thus welcomed the new report last Sunday “so that the brands organize themselves to offer alternative dematerialized solutions”.
The Cnil, the commission guaranteeing freedoms in the face of digital technology, published its recommendations on March 10 for the respect of consumer privacy, evoking solutions allowing to obtain a receipt without communicating personal details, such as the QR Code .
Consumer associations such as UFC-Que Choisir and Rural Families have also expressed many reservations regarding the announced abolition of the receipt.
According to the text of the decree, the tickets indicating a canceled banking transaction, subject to a pre-authorization regime or subject to a credit must always be printed automatically. Tickets mentioning the duration of a legal guarantee are also not concerned.