Getting France out of debt by fighting inflation and investing in the energy transition: the Government presented this Wednesday a draft budget for 2024 that responds to these “three challenges”, before parliamentary debates that promise to be intense.
The Government faces a difficult equation in its budget project, the first to want to turn the page on the health and energy crises. “We must (…) manage our public finances by responding to these three challenges,” declared the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, before presenting the budget to the Council of Ministers.
Some 16 billion euros in savings and a new tax are planned for next year. This risks affecting household purchasing power. On the contrary, other measures aimed at combating inflation will provide some relief to the French pocket. General description.
• End of the energy shield
Gas and electricity bills will increase in 2023, with the gradual end of the “price shield”, launched in autumn 2021 by the government to limit (but not eliminate) electricity price increases for two years and part of the gas. The gas has already run out since the end of July.
Regulated electricity prices, on which 23 million customers depend and which have increased by 31% since 2021, will increase by another 10% at most in February 2024, according to the Government’s commitment. The State currently covers “37% of the French people’s electricity bill,” the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, indicated in mid-September.
In total, 10 of the 16 billion euros of savings in the 2024 budget will come from the gradual extinction – until the end of 2024 – of the electricity rate shield.
• Housing rehabilitation and interest-free loan
The aid will support “the boost of high-performance renovations supported and supported” by MaPrimeRénov’, with a target of 200,000 renovations in 2024. The zero-rated loan “is extended” for four years but “refocused”, and will exclude for example , financing the installation of heating devices that run on fossil fuels.
68 million euros will also be dedicated to MaPrimeAdapt’, a new system for adapting homes to disability and loss of autonomy that “will be open to people with disabilities regardless of their age,” the executive promises.
“In total, nearly 5 billion commitments are planned in 2024 to help French people renovate their homes, which represents an increase of 1.6 billion euros in commitments compared to 2024,” indicates the government.
• Taxation of roads and airports
The Government wants to introduce a new tax on large motorway concessions and large airports in 2024, which should provide 600 million euros per year to finance the ecological transition.
There will be no impact on toll rates, assures Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Economy, due to the legal formula chosen which, according to him, will prohibit it for motorway concession companies. He was responding to the president of Vinci Autoroutes, Pierre Coppey, who declared that “a tax increase is inevitably an increase.”
“Each airline” is “free” to set its prices, but, for its part, the Government will not impose an additional tax on plane tickets in 2024, an option that the Government once mentioned, he stated.
• Car sanction and purchase of electric cars.
Penalties for the most polluting vehicles are increased for both individuals and company fleets. The “ecological bonus” for the purchase of electric cars will be maintained, but will depend next year on their “environmental score”, in particular on their transport distance, undoubtedly to the detriment of Chinese vehicles.
• Taxation and social benefits
Households will see their income tax scale indexed to inflation and increased by 4.8%, but will have to wait until 2025 to see the promise of a 2 billion tax reduction materialize. Pensions will increase by 5.2% on January 1 and social benefits by 4.6% on April 1.
Source: BFM TV
