The EBRA press group, which has nine regional titles in eastern France, announced on Monday June 22 a voluntary departure plan targeting up to 400 positions, in a context of falling sales.
The main services concerned by this project are editorial, printing, sales administration and the graphics studio, indicates the group of 3,200 employees, owned by Crédit Mutuel, in a press release. “No departure will be forced,” it is specified. Some 68 job creations are planned, mainly in the editorial department.
EBRA (Eastern Burgundy Rhône-Alpes) publishes Le Dauphiné Libération (Grenoble), Le Bien public (Dijon), Le Journal de Saône-et-Loire (Chalon-sur-Saône), Le Progrès (Lyon), L’Est republican (Nancy), Le Républicain lorrain (Metz), Vosges Matin (Épinal), L’Alsace (Mulhouse) and Latest news from Alsace (Strasbourg), titles which cover a total of 23 departments.
More than 800,000 copies per day
The group, which distributes more than 800,000 copies per day and whose digital audience reaches 21.4 million unique visitors per month, explains that it is faced with “the decline in paper sales, the evolution of information uses and the pressure of digital platforms on advertising revenues”.
Number sales and subscriptions have been halved in ten years and the operational loss has exceeded 10 million euros in 2025.
“If we do nothing, this loss could triple by 2030. Concretely, this would mean disappearing from certain territories and little by little losing our identity. This is precisely what we want to avoid,” declared the group’s president, Sophie Gourmelen, in a video message broadcast to employees.
