Traveling by plane from January 1, 2025 risks to cost more. As part of its hunt for revenue to fill France's deficit, the government wishes “make air passengers contribute to the effort to restore public accounts”.
Concretely, amendment 3630 could multiply by three the solidarity tax on plane tickets. Objective: bring in one billion euros for the State.
Where does this solidarity tax come from?
Created in 2006 by Jacques Chirac, this tax was to be used to finance the fight against AIDS in Africa. It was donated to the NGO Unitaid and, initially, thirty countries were to apply it. There were only 9 left in 2013: Cameroon, Chile, the Republic of Congo, France, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger and South Korea. In France, she fills state budgetsincluding that of Civil Aviation.
How much will you have to pay?
If Amendment 3630 is adopted, all flights departing from France will be affected. The solidarity tax is calculated based on the distance traveled and the class in which you are traveling.
There would be three main categories of scales:
- for flights in France (including overseas territories) and within Europe, the scale would increase from €2.63 to €9.50 in economy class and €20.27 to €30 a business
- for other flights less than 5,500 kmthe scale would go from 7.51 to 15 € for the economy class and 63.07 to 80 € for business cabins
- for all flights over 5,500 km, the tax would increase from €7.51 to €40 for economy class and from 63.07 to 120 euros for business cabins
Note that for a Paris-Frankfurt-Beijing flight for example, the tax would be only around ten euros because it would only take into account the France-Germany flight.
Why is Air France-KLM already increasing its prices?
The Air France-KLM group, also owner of the low-cost airline Transavia, explains that it wants to “avoid a loss of several tens of millions of euros”: “The Air France KLM Group has decided to pass on this increase immediately to the tickets sold for trips from January 1, 2025, without waiting for the final adoption of the finance bill,” explains a spokesperson for the company cited by Ulysse.com.
Air France-KLM wanted to be reassuring, affirming that “ in the event of modification of the scale, abandonment or rejection of the amendment”, their companies would not fail to proceed ” has a regularization so that the amount collected is equal to the amount actually owed under the title” of the solidarity tax on plane tickets.
Anger of passengers and professionals
Passengers as well as tourism and aviation professionals were quick to express their opposition to this amendment. The Group of French Aeronautical and Space Industries (Gifas), opposed the implementation of new taxes in the 2025 Finance Bill, fearing the decline in tourist attractiveness and “a sudden stop to the reindustrialization of the sector”.
Questioned by BFMTV, the director of Easyjet for France, Bertrand Godinot, believes that “the middle classes, SMEs or students will soon no longer have access to affordable short and medium-haul flights, but taking the plane should not be reserved for an elite.”
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