2023-09-12 05:01:00
the essential The price of gasoline, back at very high levels at the end of summer, is pushing the government to react. Bruno Le Maire invited TotalEnergies to maintain its capping promises beyond 2023, while Agnès Panier-Runacher wants to convince distributors to continue their operations at cost price. The oppositions are gnashing their teeth.
It’s difficult to miss: this summer, in the midst of the “fuel at cost” operations set up on major departure weekends by certain distributors, motorists were able to see that prices at the pump have returned to heights that have been deserted since. the start of the war in Ukraine. The €2 mark has already been crossed in many stations, for diesel as well as for unleaded, in an economic context which remains sulphurous for French people still subject to the consequences of inflation.
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So obviously, the subject did not take long to land in the political sphere. No one has forgotten that the Yellow Vest crisis began in the fall of 2018 in the wake of an unprecedented surge in prices in resorts. The government, first of all, wants to avoid giving more reasons for the social unrest to intensify. At all costs ? Not necessarily.
Rather than announcing the implementation of a new rebate driven by public spending, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire chose last week to invite TotalEnergies to extend its cap on prices at the pump “at- beyond December 31. The French oil giant has in fact committed not to go beyond €1.99 per liter for its fuels, but the increase in the price of a barrel should continue at least until January 2024. From then on, the prices in resorts might soar even more spectacularly, and no one wants to assume the consequences for the moment.
Criticisms of oppositions
“Too expensive” would be the cost that the return of the rebate would represent for the government, which estimates the potential bill for public finances at 12 billion euros for a measure which had allowed the French to save up to 30 cents per liter between September and mid-November 2022. The LR president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, who proposed reintroducing this discount to the tune of 15 to 20 cents, estimated that the executive was hiding behind budgetary considerations in a dishonest way: “If they don’t want to do it, let them assume it, but don’t tell us lies,” he lambasted last week.
Everyone has their own proposal: the general secretary of Europe Écologie-Les Verts, Marine Tondelier, imagines targeted aid checks to “urgently help French people who need this essence to work, to live, to see their family. Accusing Bruno Le Maire of becoming “the spokesperson for Total”, she advocates the implementation of alternatives to cars and oil because “it will cost more and more”.
Decisive meeting this Tuesday
On the side of motorist associations, we are repeating the same demands as for months: the reduction in taxes imposed by the State to bring down prices in resorts, as Pierre Chasseray, general delegate of “40”, recalled this Monday. million motorists. “We have one of the most excessive tax systems in the world,” he argued on France Bleu, recalling the importance of the TICPE (domestic consumption tax on energy products) and the VAT on fuel prices. These two taxes alone represent a fixed income of almost €1 per liter which goes directly into the state coffers.
This Tuesday, the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Panier-Runacher, must host a decisive meeting for the executive on this issue. She welcomes fuel distributors to the ministry to ask them to continue their “sales at cost” operations put in place during the summer.
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