Inearly sixty years ago, France was a pioneer in ecological taxation. Today, however, it is struggling to introduce a method of taxing carbon emissions. By establishing a water charge in 1964, France fought against the risk of excessive consumption of this resource. However, since the failure of the general tax on polluting activities (TGAP) in 2001, carbon tax projects have struggled to establish themselves in the long term.
In its definition, the carbon tax which was introduced in 2014 has a direct impact on transport, since it is integrated into the internal consumption tax on energy products (TICPE), itself responsible for 60% of the price gasoline.
But, since the unprecedented episode of the “yellow vests”, the very idea of increasing the carbon component has tensed all political sides, to the point of being almost absent from the 2022 presidential election.
Lack of transparency and social cost
However, by applying a price to carbon emissions, the measure is intended to be an accelerator of an energy transition, the need for which is no longer in dispute. Alas, the device is still too imperfect: lack of transparency in the allocation of its revenue, social cost too high.
Added to this is an issue that the public debate and successive governments have not addressed: the contraction of revenue from this carbon tax. The TICPE today represents nearly 5% of the general state budget (i.e. 13.6 billion in 2019). However, carbon taxation is destined to decrease, or even disappear completely, as the share of fossil fuels decreases in transport.
This paradox betrays an impossible position for the State to hold, which must massively finance the necessary stages of the decarbonization of its ecosystem, while it sees itself inexorably deprived of the revenue on which it nevertheless depends.
In addition, current carbon taxation still favors coercion too much over cooperation, since it imposes a sharp rise in prices on a non-substitutable good and does not redistribute its revenue transparently. Hence a perception of carbon taxation as an additional penalty rather than as the counterpart of support for the transition.
Pedagogy and acceptability
Finally, the payment of the proceeds of this taxation to the general budget of the State does not make it possible to teach about it and undermines its acceptability. This lack of transparency and the low visible benefit that the population derives from this tax constitute the main ferments of the opposition it arouses.
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