Several Manchesis from the horse racing industry demonstrated in Paris against the betting surcharge

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Thursday November 7, 2024 in Paris, most professionals in the horse racing industryof the racetrack volunteers of the Lower Normandy racing federation and students of theAfasec school in Graignes were mobilized among the 6,000 demonstrators (according to the organizers) having paraded against the overtaxation of horse racing.

Already nearly 1 billion paid each year

No horse racing was organized this Thursday in France. This has only happened in two periods in recent history: a few weeks during the first Covid lockdown and during the Second World War.

In a normal situation, 16,000 races are organized each year in France, every day of the year. Self-financed, so far at least, thanks to the 9% taken from the stakes.

On Thursday, dozens of buses had been chartered by the ten regional horse racing federations. Two left from La Manche: one from Carentan, the other from Villedieu-les-Poêles.

Afasec, the reference training organization for the horse racing and breeding professions in France (also financed thanks to the share of betting which goes to the sector), has fully associated itself with the movement by organizing a blank day without teaching in all of its schools across France, including that of Graignes, the first of its kind in France having been created in 1974.

Several of the collaborators, residents and learners of the Manche site also traveled by bus to Paris on Thursday, with the director Pascal Launey at their head: “To the demonstration against this tax which threatens an entire sector. On the way to supporting an entire profession,” he posted on X earlier this morning.

Thousands of jobs at risk

In the procession which was preceded by two horses of Mario Luraschi (one mounted and the other harnessed to a sulky), we could recognize Pierre Levesque, Emmanuel Varin, François Lagadeuc, the broker and breeder Michel Gasselin, the farrier Christian Avenel , presidents of several of the fifteen associations managing the racecourses of La Manche (the department of France with the most!), several members of the Lécuyer family, Thierry Lardillier and many others.

Certainly, the government must find 60 billion savings.

But the horse racing industry, thanks to betting, already pays 950 million to the State each year and 12 million to local communities having one or more of the 233 French racecourses on their territories.

In Cotentin, the City of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin and the Agglo Le Cotentin received €20,000 each (€40,000 in total) for the year 2023.

Multiple twists and turns in the National Assembly

The project to overtax horse racing betting has undergone multiple twists and turns, from withdrawals to reintroductions of amendments or sub-amendments until the rejection on Monday, thanks to the vote in the National Assembly.

This sector “is truly at the heart of our territories, of Normandie and the Channel in particular. There increase in taxation initially planned by the government would have resulted in losses estimated at nearly 40 million euros, i.e. a drop in income from 6 to 7% for agricultural stakeholders of the racing sector. Fortunately, our determination made it possible to avoid this increase. Stay at Senate to confirm our vote,” declared Monday the Manche MP Philippe Gosselin.

Other deputies expressed their support on Thursday at the end of the mobilization, Place Vauban. Contacted Thursday evening, Pierre Levesque (from Beuzeville-la-Bastille, Manche, and one of the greatest charts in French trotting) welcomed a “very strong peaceful mobilization, a beautiful solidarity between our parent companies and a warm welcome from deputies behind the Invalids. »

Horse racing betting: a game like no other

Despite everything, the sector fears l’article 49.3 that the Prime Minister could draw at the end of the legislative process, which could reintroduce the surcharge.

Except that horse racing betting is not a gambling game like any other: it allows, by providing 16,000 annual competitionsto support (very often survive) stables and breeding farms throughout the French countryside.

The horse racing industry in France maintains between 40,000 and 60,000 direct and indirect jobs including around 16,000 in Normandy.

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