EBetween the VAT on fuels at 5.5% and the more conventional one at 20%, the voters have chosen. On this line of the program alone, Emmanuel Macron should have suffered a crushing defeat against his opponent Marine Le Pen, who promised the moon. It was not the case. It may be because the drivers, educated in the behavior of different governments for decades, are not so naive as that.
They have well retained the omnipotence of the State on this subject where no gift is to be hoped for. Except, under the pressure of public opinion, a one-time discount of 18 cents on a liter of fuel. Or bonuses for the purchase of an electric car, the need for which is not so urgent for many households, unable to pay the “outstanding charge”.
Year after year, more than 40 billion euros in tax revenue swell the state coffers. Thank you car. But this manna threatens to dry up with the current fall in sales for the economic reasons that we know and the prospect of a dropout due to the inevitable increase in sales of electric cars, at this stage not providing tax revenue. You don’t have to be a fortune teller to understand that the bonuses with which they are sprinkled will one day cease and that, to regain the 40 billion in tax revenue, it will sooner or later be necessary to tax electricity.
Emmanuel Majax
Emmanuel Macron will then have to play the Gérard Majax to lull the vigilance of French consumers, who are particularly sharp on the subject. The reduction of ecological bonuses, already postponed from 1er January to 1er July 2022, has a good chance of playing extra time in the ambient climate. But for how long, when a nibbling of aid is already stopped.
A novelty, however, intended for the forgotten in the province and on small budgets, Macron 2 should introduce a program for these less privileged households for “rental of electric and hybrid vehicles at less than 100 euros per month”. A pure product from above which will perplex France from below and whose terms of application will be checked when it is actually launched. It will also be necessary to know who will pay the difference, because the monthly payment announced is based on the campaign promise, not on the calculation of the real cost price for this kind of technology.
But environmental commitment obliges since the speech in Marseille and the promised appointment of a Prime Minister dedicated to this file, Emmanuel Macron will do what is necessary to discourage conservative motorists, die-hard followers of fossil fuels. . The proliferation of “low emission zones” (ZFE) during this new five-year period will reveal to millions of French people that they can no longer access major city centers with their current cars. All agglomerations of more than 150,000 inhabitants will be concerned in 2025, that is to say tomorrow. And the cars owned by the French and rendered obsolete by this measure will no longer be worth anything on the market.
New thermal cars also pass through the vice of the threshold for triggering the malus. It will drop in 2023 from 128 g to 123 g of CO2, which will affect the whole grid by worsening the quickly dissuasive penalties. And as if that weren’t enough, the weight penalty that came into effect on January 1, 2022 and is relatively painless, as it is set very high, will soon come down the weight scale.
Hatred of the “car”
In other words, under a questionable approach, having a big car will be clearly targeted and heavily taxed. The only vehicles to be spared, the electric anvils weighted by their batteries will remain immune to any malus. Better, to help buy them, a zero-rate loan could even be offered next year to less privileged households.
In the name of ecology, we can expect a strategy leading to all-electric forced march when we know that it is the smooth transition that must be played. A method which could also have been applied with profit for the 80 km / h on the roads, brutal and calamitous measure of Edouard Philippe in his detestation of the “car” and which Emmanuel Macron never reported.
Since 2018 and the introduction of this measure, then brought back to the experimental stage, its usefulness has never been demonstrated. A little ballast was released by allowing the departments, under the aegis of road safety, to release the reins, 42 departments having decided to return, for part of their network and sometimes even the whole, to 90 km / h . No less than 38,000 kilometers of French roads are now concerned, but the 80 km / h is still not reported by an executive who is reluctant to admit his mistakes.
