No “total taxes”: Antoine Armand reassures business leaders on his first outing

The business world was expecting this at the turning point. Support for businesses should not be “an ideological issue”, declared the Minister of the Economy, Antoine Armand, on Thursday, while also assuring small businesses that there would be no “excessive taxes”.

Antoine Armand, who also holds the portfolio for Finance and Industry, spoke to local U2P employers gathered for a day of meetings in La Défense. U2P is the third representative employers’ organisation behind Medef and CPME.

It was the first public appearance for the minister, who also spoke on Wednesday before the National Assembly’s Finance Committee, with Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin.

“Interlocutor” for SMEs

“Employment, attractiveness, growth, support for businesses, should not be an ideological issue (but) a social, economic, basic issue, and that will be my compass,” he said, indicating that “the instruction that the Prime Minister has given us is to listen (…) and act on behalf of those who are on the ground and who are working.”

He will personally be the “interlocutor” for small and medium-sized businesses, since the government does not have a minister delegated for them. Although the president of the organisation, Michel Picon, had just asked him to “exclude our categories of companies” from a possible plan to increase taxes to reduce the public deficit, which could exceed 6% this year, he wanted to reassure, as he had already done on Wednesday in the Assembly.

“We will not be the government of full-throttle taxes and I will not be the minister of tax confiscation,” he said, recalling that efforts will focus “first primarily on public spending”, “then on those who have the financial resources to do so.”

wishes

While Michel Picon called for Parliament to resume the debate on the simplification law, interrupted in the Senate by the dissolution, Antoine Armand replied that Michel Barnier “would certainly speak about it” in his general policy statement on Tuesday. Antoine Armand, who remained discreet before this speech, sidestepped Michel Picon’s desire to review the financing of the social protection system.

He also hopes that a possible reform of apprenticeship funding will not affect small businesses and that the rules on company representation will be revised to benefit U2P. Without answering directly, Antoine Armand stressed that small businesses established “throughout the country” represent between “two thirds and 80%” of the country’s companies.