Will gasoline taxes increase? Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin said on Saturday, October 12, that he was not there. “unfavorable”while the Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, had stated the day before that the Government was studying the possibility of introducing amendments.
According to Saint-Martin, there is no pause. On TF1 on Saturday he assured that Mme Pannier-Runacher did not say he wanted to increase taxes on gas, but “he said that there could be modifications regarding the increase in gas taxes”.
The finance bill presented this week “does not contain an increase in gas taxes”he pointed out, declaring that he was not “unfavorable” to this eventuality.
On Friday, during a press conference, Mme Pannier-Runacher stated that “The challenge is also to work in the brown niches by increasing the penalty on cars, by eliminating the reduced VAT rate of 5.5% on the installation of fossil fuel boilers and, finally, by a government modification, through an increase in taxes. in plane tickets and gasoline”.
With this statement, the minister “it simply clarified what is in the government announcements, as presented in the press dossier” of the finance bill, under the title “amendment measures (airline tickets, fossil fuels)”his office reacted on Saturday to Agence France-Presse.
This explanation given on Friday morning by the Minister has not been questioned since then by Matignon.
Together, these increase measures by modifying the taxation of airline tickets and fossil fuels should contribute 1,500 million euros to the State budget, of which 1,000 million through the sole increase in the taxation of airline tickets. plane.
“Consistent price signals”
Friday, m.me Pannier-Runacher justified the hypotheses formulated by the need, according to her, to “give consistent price signals between carbon solutions and decarbonized solutions”.
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“It is especially important to prevent public policies and public money from making carbon-based solutions less expensive than carbon-free solutions”the minister stressed, in particular in reference to the increase in taxes on electricity, essentially carbon-free in France due to the importance of nuclear energy.
In its finance bill presented on Thursday, the government plans to increase taxes on electricity. At the same time it is guaranteed that the consumer of electricity at the regulated rate will continue to see their bill decrease on average “9% of the regulated sales price in 2025 from 1Ahem FEBRUARY “.
To achieve this, it relies on the reduction of electricity costs in the markets. This reduction must absorb the increase in the electricity tax, which will mark the departure of the tariff shield, established during the energy crisis since the end of 2021 to contain the bills of the French.
Electricity tax “It is increasing because it had returned to zero during the inflationary crisis”Saint-Martin noted on Saturday. “The State has protected our fellow citizens against the increase in energy prices, (…) Today with inflation below 2%, for our public finances, we must remove this shield if there is no more inflation.”he added.
This increase in taxation on electricity raises the concern of the actors of the energy transition, who see it as a negative signal for the acceleration of the electrification of uses (electric cars, electric heating), which goes against the objectives of France to move away from fossil fuels.
Regarding gas, the previous government had already doubled in 1Ahem January 2024, one of the taxes paid by gas suppliers and passed on to consumers, the special tax on gas. At the time, this marked the end of the gas price shield.
