Businesses, fines, food inflation… The Minister of the Economy announced several measures on Thursday during his back-to-school speech in Alex, in Haute-Savoie. Bruno Le Maire first tried to reassure entrepreneurs, promising to maintain an economic and fiscal policy favorable to businesses. “I want to reassure all those who have supported us for more than six years,” he insisted during this visit to a factory of the furniture manufacturer Fournier. “You can count on us, we will not deviate one inch from the only economic policy that has given the best results that France has known for 40 years: the policy of supply,” he assured. Le Figaro takes stock of its main announcements.
In recent days, employers have sounded the alarm against a questioning of the trajectory of tax measures favorable to companies, in particular because of the spreading over four years of the abolition of a production tax, the Contribution on the added value of companies (CVAE), which Bruno Le Maire confirmed. This tax, which weighs particularly heavily on industrial companies, has been halved this year and was to be abolished in 2024, but the government has chosen to spread out its abolition, at a cost reduced to one billion euros per year for finances. public. “At the end of 2027, the CVAE will be definitively abolished”, however assured the minister in front of an audience made up in part of local industrialists.
Anxious to better protect patents and intellectual property, Bruno Le Maire announced that he wanted to strengthen the control of foreign investments, by extending it “to the activities of extraction and transformation of critical raw materials”, recalling that China has made even. “These sectors have become decisive for the sovereignty of the country”, he indicated, adding that the control, automatic when a non-European investor buys 10% or more of the capital of a firm, would be extended to the acquisition of stakes in “French branches of foreign companies”.
For entrepreneurs, the Minister also assured that he wanted to “continue to simplify” and for this to bring together “the foundations of simplification in the next three months”. He also said he wanted to work “for the rapid development of employee share ownership”.
Bruno Le Maire also insisted on the need to “continue the reform of unemployment insurance” and to widen the difference between income from work and benefits, with the aim of reducing the unemployment rate from 7% to 5 %. “Work will remain the cardinal value of our economic policy,” he insisted, castigating “all the fads of returning to retirement at 60 and working less have led to our collective impoverishment.”
In addition to the announcements for companies, the Minister of the Economy also undertook to “tackle the problem of the recovery of fines”, the State collecting according to him only a third of the amount of the fixed fines imposed . “The exemplarity of the State supposes that the rules are the same for everyone, everywhere on the territory”, he estimated.
“No one can understand (…) that you have hundreds of thousands of fines which are never paid, by people who do not respect any rule, any right, any obligation”, lashed out the Minister of the Economy . “I cannot accept that only a third of the tort fixed fines are actually paid,” he said, relying on figures from an administration report.
The fixed fine procedure, originally reserved for fines, was extended to traffic offenses in 2016, before affecting others: in particular the use of narcotics, the illegal occupation of public or private land, or the occupation of building halls. “All offenders must be prosecuted and hit in the wallet when they do not pay their fines,” said Bruno Le Maire. “We are therefore going to reorganize the chain of processing fines, promote the payment of fines as soon as possible and make more reliable the information that goes back to the General Directorate of Public Finances so that it can penalize without delay the failure to pay fines of all French citizens, in all corners of the territory, at all times,” he continued.
Food inflation, at the heart of household concerns, is also one of the government’s pillars. “We will bring together distributors and manufacturers next week to take stock of the fight against the high cost of living,” announced the Minister of the Economy, while prices are far from falling in supermarkets. “I had indicated that inflation would start to slow in the summer of 2023. We are there”, he assured, “the INSEE figures confirm that inflation started to slow down this summer”.
“However, there is a long way from the truth of the figures to the reality of the portfolio and daily life. With Minister Olivia Grégoire, we will bring together distributors and manufacturers next week to take a new look at the fight against the high cost of living,” he said. The date of the meeting is not yet known.
