The unions had been waiting for several months for the details of the strategic plan announced by the management to relaunch the chain, in the face of catastrophic results - around 160 million losses in ten years and for the year 2021 alone a net result of -20 million euros .

Thursday, during an extraordinary meeting of the CSE, "management presented a massive layoff plan which provides for 198 layoffs" by October 2024 in Lyon - out of some 500 employees - as part of a plan to safeguard the employment (PSE), announced the SNJ in a press release.

In an internal letter obtained by AFP, managing director Guillaume Dubois, a former LCI employee appointed in July to relaunch the channel, confirmed the planned number of job cuts in Lyon, as part of a " project to redeploy the editorial staff of Euronews in Europe".

In a press release published Thursday evening at the end of the CSE, the management specified that the project aimed to make Brussels "the nerve center of the system" with the creation of more than 100 positions including 70 journalists on site.

Fifty other journalist posts are also to be created in six major European capitals.

The head office of Euronews must remain in Lyon "with more than 140 employees", adds the management.

But according to the SNJ, employees kept in Lyon will probably have to leave "in the last quarter of 2024" the current 10,000m² building emblematic of the Confluence district in Lyon signed by architects Jakob + MacFarlane, which will be put up for sale.

"The dismantling of our chain in Lyon is now almost total," castigated the SNJ.

For its part, the management underlines that this plan provides for "a significant increase" in income thanks to "the implementation of new editorial offers - in particular on digital - and on a control of operating costs", for a return to financial equilibrium "by 2025".

Launched in 1993 by some twenty European channels, the channel passed last July under the control of the investment fund Alpac Capital based in Portugal, which acquired 88% of the shares of the company by buying back the shares held by the Egyptian magnate Naguib Sawiris through his holding company MGN.

Euronews continuously broadcasts information in 15 languages ​​with an editorial staff of 400 journalists of 30 nationalities.

It has already launched in November 2020 a social plan which has led to around thirty departures, including around ten forced.

© 2023 AFP