In search of new solutions for the most modest households. The tariff shield on energy prices might be replaced by more targeted aid for low-income French people next year, the Prime Minister said on Saturday. Elisabeth Borne, in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône). “We are not going to expose the most modest French people to reckless increases in the price of energy”, assured the head of government to the press, meeting on the sidelines of the Aix Economic Meetings.
“If there was no shield” on the price of gas or cap on the price of electricity, ” electricity would be a third more expensive, and the gas 45 to 50% “more expensive, she pointed out. “We can’t imagine asking the French, starting with the modest French, to pay 45% more for their gas or a third more for their electricity”. However, given the cost of the tariff shield for the State, “we must move from general mechanisms to more targeted mechanisms”, judged Elisabeth Borne. “The work is in progress,” she added.
A new tax for energy companies?
On Thursday, the government already announced that targeted aid for people who take their car to go to work would take over in October from the general discount of 18 cents on the price of a liter of fuel, which will gradually decrease and then end definitively in December.
Asked regarding the advisability of setting up a tax on any “surplus profits” that energy companies would realize thanks to the sharp rise in energy prices, Elisabeth Borne was more evasive. “In principle, obviously, if there are people who derive superprofits from the crisis, we would like that to benefit everyone and lighten the burdens that the crisis can generate,” she said. “Afterwards, it’s not completely simple,” she immediately nuanced. “Many of our neighbors have put in place mechanisms to tax these excess profits”, but “we are not in the same situation” in France, she added.
Firstly, ” EDF has production difficulties today on its nuclear fleet and we import massively” electricity from abroad, underlined the Prime Minister, thereby ruling out the existence of “surplus profits” for the energy company. On the other hand, “we have oil companies which have distribution activities in France (but) which do not generate superprofits”, she noted.