The news channel, which accuses catastrophic financial results, prepares the opening of six offices in Europe.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
The international chain of information Euronews plans to remove nearly two hundred posts in its Lyon headquarters, with a redeployment in several European capitals provided for in its new strategic guidelines, learned the France-Presse Agency (AFP) Thursday March 2 of concordant sources.
The unions have been waiting for several months the details of the strategic plan announced by the management to relaunch the chain, faced with catastrophic results: around 160 million euros in losses in ten years and, for 2021, a result net of – 20 million euros. “During the extraordinary meeting of the CSE, the management presented a massive layoff plan which provides 198 layoffs” by October 2024 in Lyon – out of some five hundred employees – as part of a job safeguard plan (PSE), announced the National Union of Journalists (SNJ) in a press release.
In an internal letter provided by AFP, the managing director Guillaume Dubois, a former LCI, appointed in July to relaunch the chain, confirmed the envisaged number of positions. “This project provides for a redeployment of the editorial staff of Euronews in Europe,” he said, indicating that “a negotiation period of several months (…) opened on the principles and the methods of application of this Project “.
142 positions maintained in Lyon
According to the SNJ, management wishes to redeploy its teams of journalists in October 2023 “with a central writing in Brussels and the opening of six offices in Rome, Berlin, Lisbon, Madrid, London (and Lyon) within a period of Six months. Only teams of following languages will remain in Lyon: [the French], [the Russian] and [the] Farsi “. Contacted by AFP, the management could not immediately specify the number of positions to be created in other offices outside France.
According to the SNJ, 142 positions must be maintained in Lyon despite the announced sale of the seat. These employees should leave “in the last quarter of 2024” this ten thousand square meter iconic building in the Confluence district in Lyon, signed by architects Jakob + Macfarlane. “The dismantling of our channel in Lyon is now almost total,” lambasted the SNJ.
Launched in 1993 by around twenty European channels, Euronews passed last July under the control of the Alpac Capital Investment Fund based in Portugal, which acquired 88 % of the company’s shares by buying the shares held by The Egyptian magnate Naguib Sawiris through his holding MNG. Euronews continuously broadcasts information in fifteen languages with an writing of four hundred journalists of thirty nationalities. She already launched in November 2020 a social plan which led to around thirty departures, including ten forced.