Emmanuel Macron wants to reform the bonus for the least polluting cars to “support batteries and vehicles produced in Europe”

Tax credit, car bonus, training… During a speech at the Elysée in the presence of players in the sector, Emmanuel Macron presented his strategy to accelerate the reindustrialization of France. The bill, supported since January by the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, with the assistance of parliamentarians and business leaders, and whose main orientations had already been unveiled at the beginning of April, will be presented in Council of Ministers Tuesday, May 16.

The Head of State notably announced his intention to “reform the criteria for allocating car bonuses” for the least polluting cars, “to better take into account the carbon footprint of vehicle production”which will lead to “supporting batteries and vehicles produced in Europe”. Defending everything “protectionism”the Head of State saw in this measure a way of “not to use French taxpayers’ money to accelerate non-European industrialization”.

Same logic for public orders, which will take into account environmental criteria “for key decarbonization products”, such as wind turbines and heat pumps, from July 2024 instead of during 2026.

Furthermore, a new “green industry tax credit” will be established to support the production of batteries, heat pumps, wind turbines or solar panels, announced Mr. Macron. This tax credit, which will be part of the “green industry” bill, “will make it possible to trigger 20 billion in investments on the national territory by 2030”according to him.

Reduce project implementation times

Among the Head of State’s other announcements, an envelope of 700 million euros to set up training as close as possible to students, particularly in the smallest towns and in the “jobs in tension”. “700 million euros will be committed in the coming days and in the year to come to develop the training map at all diploma levels”, he said. Noting a lack of knowledge of industry professions, the Head of State also said he wanted to increase exchanges between companies and college students, because today « the internship of 3^e not enough “.

The president also announced his intention, by means of the “green industry” law, to drastically reduce the time required to implement industrial projects. He said he wanted ” to guarantee ” that no more than nine months elapse between a location decision and the start of work, ie a period half that observed today, according to him. “We can offer many billions to manufacturers; if we take three or four years to deploy them, we are already behind,” he judged.

For this, while industrial land is rare, the regional bank is going to invest one billion euros to “decontaminate” existing brownfields and make them “ready to use” for future new projects. Incidentally, the President hopes through these measures to reduce the “abusive appeals” Who “create discouragement”.

Call for a “pause” on environmental rules

To preserve room for maneuver in industrial matters, Emmanuel Macron called for “a European regulatory break” on environmental constraints, considering that the European Union had done “more than all the neighbors” and that she now had “need for stability”. In this matter, “we are ahead of the Americans, the Chinese or any other power in the world”he said, adding that he “we must not make new changes to the rules, because we will lose all the players”.

In this often technical speech, the Head of State did not refrain from a more political passage to support once again his pension reform. “If France has deindustrialized, with a weakness compared to its neighbor and ten points of GDP per capita difference with Germany, it is because we work less than our neighbors”, he said. And to add: “What does our country need to do? To continue to be competitive on capital, labor, innovation, (…) and to increase the amount of work, and it is in this strategy that the pension reform fits. »

The Head of State is due to travel to the North on Friday to visit the Aluminum Dunkirk factory, “the largest producer of primary aluminum in Europe” according to the Elysée. He must also “formalize new investments” – including the establishment by the Taiwanese group ProLogium of a fourth factory of batteries for electric vehicles in France, for entry into production from the end of 2026.