“It is above all a deep disappointment for the French men and women who will have to pay the bill behind”reacted Monday, August 1 on franceinfo the deputy Nupes of Calvados and spokesman for the Socialist Party Arthur Delaporte, while the Senate rejected the idea of a tax on “superprofits” of the major groups, during the examination at first reading of the draft amending budget 2022.
franceinfo: The Senate, with a right-wing majority, rejected the introduction of a tax on “superprofits”. Is it first of all a defeat for your political camp?
Arthur Delaporte: It is above all a deep disappointment for the French women and men who will have to pay the bill behind. We see that there are strong inequalities between, on the one hand, those who have to pay for the crisis, that is to say those who see gasoline prices soar. And then on the other side, those who benefit from it, that is to say a few large multinationals who make indecent profits. The proposal was simple: it was just a matter of going to take a little from those who are getting richer enormously. When we see that Total has seen its profit tripled in one year, it’s scandalous. It is unacceptable. We know very well that this net result, which rose to 18.7 billion euros, is linked to the crisis. There are some who are therefore enriched by the crisis, and others who are impoverished. We had to try to redistribute. Unfortunately, the presidential majority and Les Républicains united against the interests of the French.
According to the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, Total would not have made a commercial gesture on fuel prices if there had been this tax…
A rebate of 500 million euros against a profit of 19 billion euros … There is a disproportion between, on the one hand, the gesture that Total consents in its very great generosity, and what we would have recovered by introducing exceptional taxation. Because in an exceptional situation, exceptional taxation: we could have recovered 10 billion euros, that is to say 20 times more than what Total, in its great generosity, grants to French women and men. This is not our way of seeing the state and the action of the state. It is not up to the big companies that enrich themselves on the backs of the French and the French to decide whether they are going to redistribute a small crumb.
The senators still have several measures to examine, in particular the abolition of the royalty… Are there still possible victories according to you?
I hope that on public broadcasting, the Senators – all attached to the general interest – will be able to defend the interest of public broadcasting, which guarantees independent information. This is what is at stake today. Because if we abolish the license fee, we eliminate an independent source of financing which allows the independence of the public service. We had proposed, senators and socialist deputies, parliamentarians of the Nupes, an amendment which allowed an alternative tax to the increase in VAT. Because that is what will happen behind. So we go from a tax that was unfair, because everyone paid it the same way, to a tax that is even more unfair because VAT is what weighs the most on small budgets.