Gérard Larcher also says he is opposed “in order to preserve the purchasing power of the French”to a possible increase in electricity taxes beyond their pre-Covid level.
The President of the Senate Gérard Larcher says he is in favor of the budgetary effort requested from communities in the 2025 budget being reduced to two billion euros, rather than five planned by the government, in an interview with JDD put online on Saturday.
“There (…) is three (billion) short of what the government planned. We will find them elsewhere”he says in this interview published a few days after the Senate took up the examination of the state and Social Security budgets in committee. “Communities represent 70% of public investment”argues Gérard Larcher who also affirms that they “are not guilty of the widening deficit”, “no offense (to former Minister of the Economy) Bruno Le Maire”.
If Prime Minister Michel Barnier “took a certain number of steps towards the departments”, “we must also look at the levy on revenues for 450 large communities, often levied on questionable criteria”assures Gérard Larcher. “The Senate Finance Committee is in the process of fundamentally reshaping these financing mechanisms to protect departments and municipalities”he specifies.
Gérard Larcher also says he is opposed “in order to preserve the purchasing power of the French”to a possible increase in electricity taxes beyond their pre-Covid level – a measure removed with the support of the majority during the debate in the Assembly. “The subject, it seems to me, is rather to establish fairness between the taxation of gas and electricity”in the name of restoring public finances and out of ecological concern, he explains.
Exemptions from employer contributions
Asked about another sensitive measure, that concerning the reduction in exemptions from employer contributions, rejected in the Assembly, Gérard Larcher judges that these exemptions must indeed be better “framed” but what“we must undoubtedly maintain the reductions at the level of the minimum wage”.
He also says he is generally in favor of the compromise solution presented Monday by the president of the LR group to the Assembly, Laurent Wauquiez, concerning the postponement of the indexation of pensions, even if the measure “deserves to be clarified with regard to the level of ‘small pensions’”he explains.
He also takes up the proposal of the Senate Social Affairs Committee to set up a “solidarity contribution” dedicated to financing measures in favor of old age, in the form of a package of seven additional annual hours worked without remuneration by each employee.
Immigration bill
Gérard Larcher also confirms the upcoming inclusion on the Senate agenda of a proposed law on immigration “which the former president of the law commission François-Noël Buffet had prepared and which takes up many of the amendments which had been censored by the Constitutional Council for questions of form”. “Tightening of family reunification rules, reinstatement of the offense of illegal residence and re-examination of land law, in particular. This text had been voted by the previous relative majority in the National Assembly.underlines Gérard Larcher.
On the subject of proportional representation, the hobby horse of the President of the Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, Gérard Larcher does not completely close the door. “Proportionality cannot be done without restoring the possibility for a deputy or senator to combine his national mandate with a local executive mandate” et “we must base the vote on departmental lists”he decides.
