Motorway concession companies, such as Vinci, Eiffage or Sanef, which contested the levy of an “exceptional voluntary contribution” (CVE) for the benefit of the Infrastructure Financing Agency (AFIT), were dismissed on Wednesday 20 March, by the administrative court of Cergy-Pontoise (Val-d’Oise).
The companies contested the levies for the years 2020, 2021 and 2023 for a total dispute of 188 million euros and the fact that the State had not provided financial compensation to amortize this compulsory levy. The tribunal “ruled that the compensation mechanism in question was reserved for hypotheses of financial imbalance suffered by motorway concession companies, which was not demonstrated in this case”he wrote in his press release.
The CVE was established in 2015 and commits motorway companies to contribute over twenty years to the AFIT budget, which finances rail or road infrastructure projects, to the tune of 1.2 billion euros across the entire region. period.
This dispute is not the only one between the State and motorway companies, whose concessions will gradually expire by the early 2030s. One of them concerns a decision in the finance law 2020 to index the land use planning tax to inflation, to finance the Seine-Nord Europe canal.
The other, the most important, relates to the new tax decided in the 2024 budget on “long distance transport infrastructure” decided by Bercy in the name of ecological transition. It is supposed to bring in 600 million euros per year from 2024, three quarters of which would come from the motorway sector and a quarter from the air sector. The sum must also directly contribute to the AFIT budget. Vinci has already threatened to considerably increase its toll rates in 2025 if the tax is maintained, a right that the government contests.