A barker? A nice idealist? A traitor to the corporate cause or a courageous visionary? We can say everything about Pascal Demurger, but certainly not that the guy doesn’t like uncomfortable positions or impossible missions. Like, for example, putting circles into squares. Or, which amounts to almost the same thing, to fight against the planned collapse of the planet, while remaining with both feet in the capitalist economy. He is convinced that the system can be changed from the inside. That there is no need to ring a revolution, that we can move forward step by step, as long as we roll up our sleeves.
At the head of MAIF, Pascal Demurger, 59, is a boss who says what his counterparts do not like to hear. That the sole logic of profit maximization is no longer compatible with the fight against global warming. That it is time for companies to think about sharing value when dividend income has increased, over the last ten years, by 70% compared to only 20% for salaries. Pascal Demurger has a program but no troops.
In March, he took over as co-chair of the small Impact France movement, which brings together fifteen thousand social and solidarity economy companies, with the aim of getting it out of semi-clandestinity. On October 20, he had a meeting with Elisabeth Borne in Matignon to sell her an idea that would raise eyebrows at Medef: making tax cuts (and, more broadly, all public aid) conditional on socially and ecologically responsible behavior. companies.
He wants the government to reserve the planned reduction in the contribution on the added value of companies, i.e. 1 billion euros for four years, only for companies which have published their carbon footprint (only 43% of companies with more than five hundred employees comply with this obligation). “You might say it’s not much, but it’s more than it seems. We want to create a first symbolic break in our tax policy”, he pleads.
“Culturally right-wing and politically left”
Convinced that this type of measure is popular among public opinion, he says he is hopeful that the government will take up its proposed amendment. It is far from won. The left under François Hollande had fractured on this issue. Already, Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of the Economy, did not want to hear about it.
“Even if we can share the objective of this type of measure, I fear that we will create gas factories and that we will miss both the objective of reindustrialization and decarbonization”, believes the Minister Delegate in charge of industry, Roland Lescure, who has known Pascal Demurger for several years. A virtual rejection, which does not prevent him from praising him: “It’s easier to make your speech when you’re an insurer than a steelmaker. But if all bosses were like him, France would be more peaceful, the planet would probably be in better shape, and I’m not even sure that business performance would be worse. »
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