2023-11-29 07:46:00
[Article publié le mercredi 29 novembre à 8h46, mis à jour à 9h13]
3%: this is the maximum increase that will be applied to motorway tolls from February 1, 2024. “Next year, there will be an increase that will be limited, an increase that will be less than 3%,” has, in fact, promised Clément Beaune on the air of RMC this Wednesday.
This is much lower than the +4.75% of this year 2023, but well above the +2% of 2022 and especially the +0.44% of 2021. The reasons for such differences? Inflation. Toll prices are, in fact, revalued every year according to a calculation which takes into account at least 70% of inflation (excluding tobacco) over twelve months until October, and possible increases depending on the planned work. by the various dealers. As a reminder, the price increase reached +4% year-on-year this October.
Motorways: the increase in tolls has been limited in 2022 by the Transport Regulatory Authority
A tax that does not pass
This statement from the minister comes as tensions have been brewing for several months between the government and highway companies. Because the executive is seriously considering taxing them, considering their profitability too high. The stated objective with this additional windfall is to finance the ecological transition and rail transport.
In its 2024 budget, the government plans a new tax on motorway concessions and large airports. This tax “on long-distance transport infrastructure” must bring in 600 million euros per year from 2024. Three quarters of the revenue would come from the road sector and a quarter from the air sector, according to the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire.
The government taxes highways and large airports in the name of the climate
This envelope will be used to finance “investments in electrical terminals” but also « social leasing to make it cheaper to have an electric car and the purchase of new trains”, explained Clément Beaune this Wednesday.
The fact remains that for motorway players, increased taxes mean “inevitably an increase in toll rates”, said the president of Vinci Autoroutes Pierre Coppey at the end of September.
Vinci threatens a 5% increase
In mid-November, it became more precise. For him, increasing taxes on highways is a “misinterpretation”.
“It is inevitably less investment at a time when there is a need to do a lot and it is also inevitably an increase in prices which we estimate today of around 5% taking into account a tax of 4.6% on motorway turnover”, did he declare.
Words that Clément Beaune brushes aside. “There has been a lot of misinformation, sometimes there have been a lot of lies linked to this tax on motorway concession companies. It has no impact on the evolution of tolls,” he said this Wednesday. The increase mentioned by Vinci, ” it’s no “, insisted the minister. “It is the State which in the end takes a legal text which validates this evolution of tolls”. Those who mention a repercussion of the tax “don’t tell the truth to the French”.
The man who is also deputy general manager of Vinci still threatened to take legal action to win his case. “It is a bad idea that we contest and that we will contest by all means if the government does not give up on it or if Parliament persists in voting for this project. This will be played out in the field of administrative justice, constitutional justice and, where applicable, European justice, but perhaps we will find a solution before », he warned.
(With AFP)
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