2024-10-03 07:31:30
He is clear. “I will not vote for a tax increase,” Gérald Darmanin, a Northern MP and former interior minister, told franceinfo on Thursday. “I am free in Parliament and will not vote for any tax increases. For the moment, the budget as it stands is unacceptable,” he added, stating that “the power is in Parliament” and that a possible increase in mandatory contributions must therefore be discussed.
“We must explain what we will do with the country,” said the man who was also Minister of Public Accounts from 2017 to 2020. “We were the party of tax cuts, unemployment reduction and reforms. It is strange that LR (from which Prime Minister Michel Barnier comes) is the party that wants to increase taxes,” he also declared.
“The most important thing remains employment”
Gérald Darmanin also said he disagreed with “the budget trajectory” of the Prime Minister who wants to reduce the public deficit below 3% of GDP in 2029 and below 5% in 2025. “We cannot maintain this trajectory without a sustainable increase in taxes”, the Together for the Republic (EDR) deputy wants to believe. For him “increasing taxes” would mean “creating unemployment”. “Our great success is the reduction of unemployment (…) I will not interrupt this economic work. The most important thing remains the employment of people,” continued Gérald Darmanin.
On the other hand, he said he was in favor of a discussion on the 35-hour work week, calling for “work more”. On the pension reform he asks “not to touch the difficult reforms we have made”. During his general policy speech, Michel Barnier said he was in favor, in this regard, of a dialogue with the social partners on “reasonable and fair adjustments”.
On Thursday morning, Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin announced that “0.3%” of French families will be hit by an “exceptional” tax increase. When questioned on France 2, he cited the example of “a family without children who receives an income of around 500,000 euros a year”, underlining that “we are talking about the most fortunate”.
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