“France is increasingly isolated”

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Germany wants the exceptional profits, made by some energy companies thanks to soaring market prices, to be used to relieve household bills, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday 4 September. While European countries are taking measures in turn, France still refuses to implement such taxation. Three questions to Quentin Parrinello, spokesperson for the NGO Oxfam France.

RFI: Germany has decided to use the superprofits of companies. The government of Olaf Scholz does not speak of a tax on superprofits, but of a partial levy. What is the difference ?

Quentin Parrinello : A priori, it is the same thing. We don’t have the details yet, but there happens to be a party within the German governing coalition, the liberals, who refuse to use the word “tax”. But the mechanism should be quite similar to what was adopted in Italy, and what should be adopted in Spain, so that’s rather good news.

What exactly is this mechanism?

In Italy and Spain, there is indeed a tax on what are called “superprofits”, which will look at the share of superprofits made in each country. Therefore, in Italy: the share on Italian territory; in Spain: the share on Spanish territory… It’s the same thing in UKit exists in Greece, it will be adopted in the Netherlands.

The mechanism differs a little bit depending on the country, but the philosophy is the same. These countries are calling on the companies which are making super profits on the back of the crisis, those which, in a certain way, are speculating on the back of the crisis, and increasing prices to finally make exceptional margins before granting exceptional payments to their shareholders on the back of the crisis.

What sectors are these companies you are pointing to coming from? ?

Lately, the sectors where we see superprofits are rather sectors where there is little competition. These are oligopolistic sectors, like that of energy, of course. We think of Total in France, Repsol in Spain, or Eni Italy.

There is also the transport sector, maritime freight. In France, we had the announcements of the exceptional results of the CMA-CGM company which, with the increase in the cost of maritime freight, made more than 14 billion euros in profits in the first half of 2022. It is almost as much as they did throughout 2021. This is also the case in digital, and in the pharmaceutical sector.

Which countries have come out in favor of this tax? Is France the only one not to follow?

France is increasingly isolated. The United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary are in the process of implementing this tax. The Netherlands and Germany have also just announced it. It is hoped that Germany’s decision will put pressure on the French government.

What is worrying is that the argument used by the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire is simply to say “ we don’t like taxes “. It’s a bit light.

Faced with the situation, even in Germany where there is a party in the government coalition which is not necessarily the most pro-taxation party in the world, they are showing pragmatism in implementing this tax on the windfall profits of crisis. We are waiting for the French government to come out of its dogmatism.

How much could this tax bring in?

It should be in the billions. We are in the process of quantifying what this tax would bring in. It’s a bit complicated because we don’t have access to all the data.

The simplest way would indeed be for Bercy’s services to do it. We hope to be able to offer our own costing in the coming weeks. To give you an idea, in Italy and Spain, we are between 5 and 15 billion according to the different evaluations.

Why not trust companies that could redistribute via price reductions? This is essentially what Bruno Le Maire said during his visit to Medef earlier this week.

Because we see that the exceptional profits of these companies also give record dividends. Today’s profit is not tomorrow’s investment. We can clearly see that this is not redistribution, but record payments to shareholders for today.

Secondly, the gestures made by certain companies, I am thinking in particular of Total and CMA-CGM, are nevertheless relatively symbolic. Total announced a rebate of 0.20 euros [sur le prix du litre à la pompe, NDLR]. Admittedly, this has an impact on the price at the pump, but it only costs them 500 million euros, while the group’s profits were in the first half of the order of 18.8 billion dollars.

It should not be forgotten that most of the discount at the pump is provided by the State. This costs us 4.4 billion euros per year, there is a strong contribution to public finances. For us, there is a real challenge in also involving these companies with exceptional profits.

►Also see: France: the idea of ​​a tax on the superprofits of the energy giants again in debate

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