The tax on motorways and major airports will see the light of day

It is not yet known when this measure will take effect, but the Constitutional Council validated on Thursday the tax on long-distance transport infrastructure, which should finance the ecological transition by bringing in 600 million euros per year.

This tax, strictly French, does not respond to any European imperative. Validated on Thursday, September 12 by the Constitutional Council, it is supposed to finance the ecological transition to the tune of 600 million euros per year.

It will apply to highway and airport management companies that generate a turnover of at least 120 million euros and whose profitability threshold reaches 10%. This will therefore concern major players such as Groupe ADP, which manages airports in the Paris region, but also Vinci and Eiffage on the highway side. The new tax will be paid into the budget of the Transport Infrastructure Financing Agency.

Motorway and airport management companies are not happy with this measure, with several arguments. For the airports of Roissy, Orly, Nice, Marseille or Lyon, they believe that this tax establishes unjustified differences in treatment between the different players: those who are above and those who are below 120 million euros in turnover. Since this new levy is only implemented in France, it creates a handicap for airport management companies subject to ever-increasing international competition, or quite simply between major European capitals.

The affected companies deplore that the accumulation of this tax with corporate tax results in a confiscatory level of collection. According to them, the money collected by the State will not go towards the investment needed to modernize infrastructure and upgrade their equipment in the name of the ecological transition.

But this new tax will only be funded for a quarter by airports. The motorway sector will provide three-quarters of it. While all airport management companies should represent a levy of 150 million euros – according to the French Airports Union – Vinci Autoroutes estimates that for it alone, the new tax contribution will cost it 280 million euros for the year 2024. To compensate, motorway managers are threatening to significantly increase the price of tolls from 2025, even if the current method of calculating these rates, based on inflation, does not seem to allow it..