When I first read this I thought it was an April Fool’s joke. Except it’s December
Twas on national news on thurs night. Going to confuse a lot of people especially the elderly and non french speakers.
That sounds like a GPDR disaster waiting to happen.
Presumably the local Bureau de Poste can send the letter for you even if it’s not selling the stamps? 
You would have thought so.
Apart from the odd card or parcel sent to the UK, we only visit our local La Poste to send/return official forms that can’t be completed online.
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I must admit that I would be surprised if people couldn’t go to the Bureau de Poste to send priority letters since it goes completely against everything else official bodies have done to make sure that people without internet facilities can do things by other means.
I have several prestamped priority envelopes, which the laPoste lady told me will still be honoured.
Apart from that, I think I’ve read the priority letters are now done through the internet.
But there will be someone at laPoste helping those who can’t do it themselves, with your letter being scanned/sent… then printed and delivered…
I can see that working… in France when the cost of a stamp goes up, old stamps purchased at the earlier lower price are honoured.
We checked… we have no priority letter stamps left over as we send very little these days by post.
In that case, how on earth do you send something where it’s important to send an original? You might as well just send an email if all it is is a scanned copy of something?
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They are talking about priority letters which must arrive the next day…
the standard 3 working days is still available, I believe.
I realise that, @stella - would still have thought sending originals was important for post that was that critical!
As it’s LaPoste who are stopping the “stamped” priority… I’m presuming that the various “bodies” (who might well be asking for stuff/originals to be sent) will have got their act together and be informing the “client” (you/me) how to go about things…
Frankly, I’ve decided not to worry about things beyond my control… there’s quite enough ordinary goings-on to occupy my withering brain cells…
Happy New Year… may Peace and Goodwill prevail.
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If you need to send an original and don’t want the basic green service you need to send it using the Lettre Services Plus tariff, or if it’s very important there’s still Lettre recommandée. Some people are perhaps to be missing the obvious here, that this isn’t some kind of environmental drive or something, I assume their options were to add another euro or two on the price of every red stamp to make it viable, or to just say ‘if you want to send actual paper you’ll either have to go cheap, or pay through the nose for it. The green and new E red tariff cost about the same as today, the Lettre services Plus is 2,95€, and recommandée is from just under a fiver. They’re pushing people into using green or E-red for anything at all possible, but saying ‘if you really need to send things by paper that matter to you, there’s these other options but you’ll have to pay for the privilege.’
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Thanks for the explanation @kirsteastevenson . That makes sense of the situation even if it’s not something I am all that happy with (as I use the current priority reasonably frequently, being a bit of a last-minute merchant 
)
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Ah! Angela! La Poste’s stunt is designed to make you into a ‘in good time merchant!.’ Think of it as their way of imposing a ‘good intentions - timely action’ on you, like it or not!. 
I was a bit concerned that the letter I posted on Sat Dec 30th with a red stamp would be collected from the box at the P.O. on Monday 2nd and deemed unworthy/inadequate in some way - or just take forever.
As it was a request for a comprehensible version of the scribbled mess by the sec of the cardio for my sequence of RdVs, starting next week, it was important that it arrive in good time, esp if the reply was going to be by snail-mail.
I was astonished to get an email reply yesterday afternoon, 3rd Dec. Bravo La Poste!
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For those of you, like me, who have a stock of red stamps you can exchange them. 1 red stamp gets you a green stamp and a suivi sticker, for example
But of course you can’t just hand them over the counter and het a small handful of coins. There is a formulaire and an envelope! My post office didn’t’ have any on Friday but will drop one in our letter box next week.
I heard about this announcement a few months ago. I have a lot of red stamps in storage - you can still use them, but they will function like a green stamp in terms of priority. I believe they were valued at 1,43 euros in 2022, and as they’ve been discontinued they remain at that value. You can use them to complement a heavier letter, and they will retain that value.
You can still send post using the green stamps or commemorative ones. I can’t see people using the new system much, as usually you can just send an email instead. It also begs the question, if they are scanning your letters and reprinting them, how secure is your information?
Last week on the radio, I heard La Poste are running a trial in March, and certain regions in France will only receive post every other day. This excludes any special priority postings (presumably 24hour chronopost or something akin to that).
A green stamp is €1.16, so I don’t want to pay €1.43 for something that should be €0.27 less!