The aid ceiling will be doubled to four million euros, Bruno Le Maire also indicated on Tuesday.
The government claims to have heard the calls of SMEs taken by the throat by soaring energy prices. Invited on FranceInfo, Tuesday morning, the Minister of Economy and Finance announced that the “tariff shield criteria will changefor small businesses, to make them clearer and more efficient.
Today, the criteria are too complex and are not based on the right indicators, justified Bruno Le Maire. A small business owner wishing to be helped must today prove that his energy bill “represents 3% of your turnover in 2021“. A choice that is too limited, according to the minister, who therefore wishes “move the cursor“: it will therefore now simply be necessary to show that the energy bill weighs 3% of the figure “over the last months of 2022“. In addition, the aids will belined“, going from two to four million euros at most, and “it will suffice that the profits are down at the end of the year 2022 for you to be eligible for this aid».
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These new rules will come into force on November 1, noted the boss of Bercy, calling on small bosses to seek public aid via a “one stop shopon the DGFIP website.
For several months, voices have been raised to demand a modification of the rules governing the use of state aid to protect companies against soaring energy prices. “We have set up aid schemes that can go up to two million euros, sometimes more, but I can see that they are too complicated“, admitted last week Bruno Le Maire, in Chartres. The boss of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, was also skeptical, describing the system in place “gas plant“. As a result, companies made little use of the system: in mid-September, only 50 million euros out of the 3 billion budgeted had been disbursed.
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