President Emmanuel Macron estimated this Wednesday that an “exceptional tax on companies”, as announced by the government of Michel Barnier, was “well understood by large companies” but that it must be “limited”.
Faced with France’s degraded public finances, “the solution must not be a short-term adjustment by cutting social spending (…) nor overtaxing because we do not have much room for fiscal maneuver,” said the head of state at a forum in Berlin the day after the Prime Minister’s general policy statement.
A “temporary” tax increase
Michel Barnier stressed on Tuesday that France’s “colossal” public debt was a “veritable sword of Damocles” which, if nothing was done, risked placing the country “on the edge of the precipice”.
Seeing in the reduction of expenses “the first remedy” for debt, he also announced that participation would be requested from “large companies which make significant profits” and from “the most fortunate French people”, in the name of “ tax justice”.
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The Minister of Economy and Finance Antoine Armand reaffirmed on Wednesday that the least fortunate taxpayers and medium-sized businesses would be spared, and insisted on the fact that the tax increase for the wealthiest would be “temporary”.
Emmanuel Macron intends to act at European level
For Emmanuel Macron, the absolute priority of the French economy must be improving the “youth activity rate” and reducing the “unemployment rate”. He also believes that Germany is doing better than France in this regard.
The president, whose camp lost a majority in France after an electoral defeat, intends to continue to play a role in trying to stimulate competitiveness and growth. But its action will now be carried out primarily at the European level, he said.
“For me, the first priority is the European scale,” declared the head of state from Berlin. “This is where we can unlock a lot of growth and potential,” he argued, saying in particular that he wanted to create “a shock of simplification” in the European Union, whose economic dynamism and innovation are hampered, according to him, by too many regulations.