After two years of stability, the price of a pack of cigarettes “will increase like inflation”, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced on RMC / BFMTV on Monday, before the presentation of the draft budget for 2023.
“I confirm that the price of the package (…) will increase like inflation. It would be quite paradoxical for the rise in cigarettes to be less than inflation”, it would mean that “finally, relatively, the price would fall”, she declared.
“Given the impact of tobacco on health, I think it would be more understandable and therefore we have planned to index the price of a pack of cigarettes to inflation”, according to the Prime Minister.
On Friday, Les Echos indicated that the government was considering indexing excise duties on tobacco to inflation, i.e. an increase of around 70 euro cents in the price of cigarette packs, according to a figure from the economic daily. Asked about the subject, government spokesman Olivier Véran then referred to the presentation of the Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS). “That’s where the announcements will come in,” he said.
The “worried” tobacconists
To reduce tobacco consumption, the government has raised taxes regularly, from 2018, until reaching a price of 10 euros per pack of 20 cigarettes in November 2020. A tax freeze then took place in 2021 and 2022.
The tobacconists said they were “worried” on Friday about the prospect of seeing tobacco taxation increase. For the president of the Confederation of tobacconists, Philippe Coy, any increase should be “very moderate, around 20 cents per year”, he declared. He had called for “a multi-annual visibility of taxation, as under the previous five-year term”, allowing professionals “to pilot the liner and find the right directions”.
In France, some 24,500 tobacconists live from the monopoly of the sale of tobacco which generates 60 to 80% of their income, according to the Confederation of tobacconists.