Soaring energy prices followed by fuel shortages: France has experienced major disruptions at the pump in recent months, which have hit household wallets hard. The government’s plan to help them cope with rising gasoline prices is due to change on Wednesday 15 November. The world answers for the occasion the questions that you can ask yourself on the subject.
Why are we seeing such a rush to service stations at the start of the week?
Since Monday, November 14, around 13% of metropolitan service stations have run out of different fuels and 21% of them have run out of at least one of them. This rush of motorists at the pump explained by the impending reduction in the amount of rebates on the price of fuel.
The discount of 30 euro cents per liter of fuel, set up by the State since 1is septemberwill indeed drop to 10 cents on Wednesday. The one set up in parallel by the TotalEnergies group in the group’s stations will drop by 20 to 10 cents on the same date.
Planned since the start of the system for the month of November, this drop in the aid provided to households to cope with soaring prices has been postponed by fifteen days by the government. due to fuel shortage which hit the country last month.
How to explain the price differences that may exist between service stations?
Sometimes 5, 10, 20, 30 cents per litre: the price difference displayed from one service station to another can be surprising.
This is firstly explained by the fact that large distributors – such as supermarket stations or oil groups – buy their fuel in larger quantities and can therefore more easily negotiate their margins. This allows them to display a more competitive price at the pump than the small independent service stations. The latter are put in greater difficulty by the surge in the prices of the various fuels, often having little financial leeway to lower their costs.
Added to this are the consequences of the strike at refineries and oil depots which affected the metropolitan territory during the month of October. This movement, which led to major supply difficulties in several regions, favored a rise in fuel prices at stations, due to their scarcity.
The situation has not yet fully returned to normal since the last two sites on strike, the Gonfreville-l’Orcher (Seine-Maritine) and Feyzin (Rhône) refineries, ended their social movement November 2 and 8. At the beginning of November, around 20% of service stations were still encountering supply difficulties. But the situation should return to normal in the next fortnight.
Finally, the fact that TotalEnergies has agreed to a general reduction in the prices of the various fuels in all of its 3,500 service stations since the beginning of September should be taken into account to explain the disparities observed between stations.
How much does the system cost the state in total?
Over the whole of 2022, the State will have spent more than 7.5 billion euros to finance the fuel discount, intended to offset the galloping inflation that households have been facing since January. In order to maintain the balance of the public accounts, the Ministry of the Economy has however been seeking to reduce the bill for several months.
As a reminder, the first rebate on fuel prices financed by the State was implemented on 1is last April and initially amounted to 18 centimes per litre. Before going to 30 cents on the 1is September and to drop to 10 cents from 16 November.
When will the rebates end and what mechanism to replace them?
Discounts on the price of fuel set up by the State and the TotalEnergies group are in effect until 31 December inclusive. To reduce public spending and better target beneficiaries, the government plans to introduce aid from January 2023 for the 12 million poorest French people who use a vehicle to go to work, called “worker fuel allowance”.
The Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, justified Monday, November 14 on LCI the transition from general aid to a more targeted system, arguing that‘”we can’t afford a discount for life”and emphasizing the exception of this aid from the French State vis-à-vis its European neighbors.
rgies rebates causes a government hiccup
The targeted device was carried out this summer by the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, as the debates on the budget in Parliament approached. If the government envisaged an entry into force at the end of the year, it had to give it up under pressure from the opposition, who feared that the middle classes would ultimately be forgotten by the system. This is why the rebate was not only extended but also increased at the start of the school year.
The new aid system could come into force at any time without going through Parliament, by government decree. It should be detailed ” in the next weeks “said Mr. Attal on Monday.
The Minister specified that the procedure for benefiting from it would be ” very simple ” to be continued : “All you have to do is go to a website, enter your electronic declaration number [des impôts] and his car registration number. (…) Then, you will receive the aid directly in your bank account, after a few days. » According to the minister, the cost of this measure should rise “around 1.5 or 1.6 billion euros”.