The left-wing coalition Nupes presented a bill on Wednesday to tax the “superprofits” of big companies and try to obtain a referendum of shared initiative, a long-term procedure which must first be validated by the Constitutional Council. . The first secretary of the Socialist Party Olivier Faure, at the initiative of this proposal, indicated that the text had been signed by 240 parliamentarians.
In the event of a green light from the Constitutional Council within a month, the Nupes (LFI, PS, PCF and EELV) bill must obtain nearly five million citizen signatures in nine months to trigger a referendum. “We hope that this procedure will create a balance of power” with the presidential majority, underlined Olivier Faure.
Before a hypothetical referendum in several months, the rebellious deputy Eric Coquerel, at the head of the Finance Committee, hopes to “win this battle” in the fall, by amendments to the draft budget 2023. The text of the Nupes provides for tax the “superprofits” of “large” companies, “mostly multinationals”, with a turnover of more than 750 million euros, all sectors combined.
The oil group TotalEnergies, the pharmaceutical group Sanofi and the shipowner CMA CGM, in sectors where “exceptional profits have been made, decorrelated from any innovation, productivity gain or internal strategic decision within the company”, are among the targets. of the left through this proposal. The “contribution”, which would apply until December 31, 2025, would affect companies whose additional taxable income is at least 1.25 times higher than the average result for the years 2017, 2018, 2019, with a progressive tax scale of 20%, 25% or 33% of the “superprofits”.
The presidential majority favors a “European solution”
For MP David Amiel, who speaks on behalf of the presidential majority, a tax is “neither a totem nor a taboo”. However, still according to him, the macronists favor a “European solution to avoid distortion of competition” between countries. For its part, the European Commission is proposing “a contribution” to producers and distributors of gas, coal and oil and would like to cap the income of producers of electricity from nuclear and renewable sources, which reap exceptional profits.
The shared initiative referendum procedure (RIP) has never succeeded since its introduction in the Constitution in 2008. A previous RIP proposal, against the ultimately aborted privatization of Aéroports de Paris, had collected 1.1 million supporters , far from the necessary threshold.