🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Electrifying France

05 November 2023 - France works towards EV infrastructure target, Bruno Le Maire attends Paris Games Week, and the social security budget passes first hurdle

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This week

• 🚗France works towards EV infrastructure target

• 🎮Bruno Le Maire at Paris Games Week

• 👨🏻‍⚖️Social Security budget passes first hurdle

🚗France works towards EV infrastructure target

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Let’s start the week off with some positive news:

The French government have announced a renewed funding effort to ensure that France is able to meet the goals set out in the EU’s Regulation for the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure (AFIR), choosing to focus on electric vehicle charging stations.

The goal is for France to be a leader in the EU, and to have 400,000 EV charging points across the country by 2030, with this number including 50,000 fast charging points.

Currently, the French EV charging network includes 110,000 charging points, making it the second best equipped country in Europe.

The reason why this renewed charge has taken place is because of the fact that the new AFIR regulation stipulated that every primary transport corridor needs to have a fast-charging station every 60km by 2025.

If you also look at the figures, as you can see in a 6 may article in Le Monde, France had 761,000 fully electric vehicles and 449,000 hybrid vehicles earlier this year. there are therefore 1,210,000 electrified vehicles out of the 39 million vehicles in 2022.

It’s for this reason why the government announced an increase of €200 million over the 2024-2027 period, to ensure that there is enough funding for this initiative on top of the €320 million that was already allocated for the 2016-2023 period.

For those who wonder if it’s possible for the French state to be able to achieve this goal: last year alone, three thousand charging points were installed every month, including state-of-the-art chargers that are 10x faster than those installed in 2019.

🎮Bruno Le Maire at Paris Games Week

Paris Games Week 2015 (Photo by Sergey Galyonkin)

Staying on the topic of technology, this week saw France’s largest video game event, Paris Games Week, taking place at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, and where better for a potential presidential candidate to try to build his profile?

It’s for this reason that Bruno Le Maire took part in the event, accompanied by the Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications, Jean-Noël Barrot, a regular at Paris Games Week and a man working on several major digital and technological initiatives.

A big part of this visit was that the video games industry is an prominent part of the French economy, accounting for a total turnover €5.5 billion, and a total of 25,000 employees. The industry is also considered a strong tool for not only soft power externally, but also for developing skills and cultural knowledge within France.

It was for this reason that Le Maire had pushed for a VAT reduction on e-sports tickets in the finance bill for 2024, on top of other financial incentives and tax reductions for video games companies across several budgets. He has even gone as far as to say that he was against any attempt to review these before 2026.

However, let’s face it, Bruno Le Maire is also positioning himself for an expected run at the Elysée in 2027.

Speaking to young people and engaging with them is a sure-fire way of building up his stock and his reputation amongst a key part of the electorate. It also allows him to start building a supporter base that will enable his eventual campaign to be more mobile.

He will likely want to put together a militant group similar to the Jeunes avec Macron, who have been active since 2016 and have been influential and passionate campaigners across several elections, and which have carried a significant part of the Macronist base.

However, he has a long way to go if he wants to build his profile and compete with other candidates like Gerald Darmanin and Gabriel Attal, as well as the current frontrunner for the French Liberals, Edouard Philippe.

👨🏻‍⚖️Social Security budget passes first hurdle

The Palais Bourbon (Photo by DXR)

On to financial matters, the ongoing budget process is playing out a lot like last year, where Elisabeth Borne is finding herself attempting to get budgetary texts through the parliament before finding herself being pushed to utilise Article 49.1, under parliamentary pressure, to push legislation through.

On this occasion, it was the social security financing Bill (PLFSS) that had triggered this, with the text increasing funding for social security. According to estimations, this would increase the deficit by €8.8 billion in 2023, and €11.2 billion in 2024.

Most notably, health insurance expenses form the largest portion of this increase, and also includes measures such as:

• The papillomavirus vaccination campaign announced for all secondary school students

• Free condoms for all those under 26 years of age

• The reimbursement of reusable period protection for woman under 26

• A potential suspension of daily allowances should an employer mandated doctor judge that a work stoppage be unjustified

• A potential reduction of reimbursement in the event an individual refuses shared medical transport

Naturally, these last two measures raised concerns and attracted criticism from the left, however, there are also several additional potential measures that triggered criticisms, one related to the doubling of the ‘remainder payable’ for medicines of policy holders (from 50c to €1) and consultations (€1 to €2).

There is also the ongoing debate regarding the Agirc-Arrco supplementary pension funds, which while not a part of the budget discussions, are forming part of the debates nonetheless.

While there was out, there was another attempt to bring down the government from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, who launched the 23rd motion of censure against Borne’s government.

With the censure motion failing (89 out of 289 voted in favour), the PLFSS automatically passed the first reading stage, and will now be examined in the French Senate.

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