Posted Oct 17, 2022 1:52 PMUpdated on Oct 17, 2022 at 2:25 PM
The budget “to the nearest euro” promised by the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, will wait a bit. The extension for two additional weeks of the discount of 30 cents on fuel prices should cost no less than 440 million euros in public finances, according to a source in Bercy.
Sunday evening, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, announced that she wanted to “extend this fuel discount until mid-November”. Initially, this rebate which came into force last September was to be reduced to 10 cents from 1is november. The social conflict in the refineries, and the fuel shortages which have affected many service stations for a few days, finally pushed the executive to change course, while Bruno Le Maire repeated again last week that he did not want to relaunch this device. considered very costly and not sufficiently targeted to those who need it most.
Salty bill
In fact, the bill is proving increasingly salty for the taxpayer. The first discount of 18 cents on the liter granted from April to August last had already cost around 3 billion euros. To this was added the new system voted last July – with a rebate of 30 cents reduced to 10 cents at the end of the year – for which an envelope of 4.6 billion had been initially planned.
That is a total bill of 7.6 billion in total, which could therefore be increased to more than 8 billion with the two-week extension announced on Sunday, if the envelope voted this summer proved insufficient to meet this additional cost. Especially since fuel purchases have been abnormally high in recent days, motorists wanting to avoid running out of fuel.
Tensions within the executive
This decision has in any case caused tensions within the executive, according to our information. The arbitration was made at the highest level of the state. But it appears to contradict the speech made by Bruno Le Maire in recent days around the examination of the finance bill for 2023.
Last Thursday, the Minister of the Economy warned of “funding conditions in Europe which have changed radically”, citing as proof the fact that “for the first time in many years, German Treasury bonds ‘have not found a full taker’ in a recent debt issue. Obviously, Matignon will have been more sensitive to social tensions than to those on the markets.
More targeted device
Asked this Monday morning on “BFMTV”, Bruno Le Maire, in any case, reaffirmed that this general discount on the price of a liter of fuel was always intended to end at the end of the year. If tensions were to reappear in the coming weeks on prices at the pump, the government intends to favor a system more targeted at the less wealthy households who go to work by car. The device is already ready, since it was initially to come into force in the fall. Bercy had given up and preferred the rebate of 30 cents to convince LR to vote for its purchasing power package this summer.
If the taxpayer can pull a face after this announcement, this is not the case for the car driver. Especially since Total confirmed on Monday that it was also going to extend by two weeks the additional discount of 20 cents per liter in its service stations, when it was also due to end on 1is November.