France has become the first European country to ban advertisements for fossil fuels, reports The Times.
President Macron promised to place the environment at the heart of his second term of office after he was re-elected in May.
The ban, however, has come under fire from environmental activists, who say it does not go far enough, and companies who denounce it as ill timed during the cost of living crisis.
Supermarket chains cannot run advertisements for cheap petrol, for instance. Advertisements for natural gas will be banned from the beginning of next year.
The idea was put forward during a convention on climate change organised in 2019 and involving 150 ordinary people whose names had been drawn out of a hat. Macron promised to implement their proposals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2030, compared with levels in 1990.
François Chartier, an oil campaigner at Greenpeace, expressed disappointment at the ban’s scope and suggested that it was an exercise in political greenwashing.
The initial proposal by the climate convention was to outlaw any form of advertising by oil companies.