It is a fact acquired since many elections: culture is no longer a campaign issue and does not tip the ballot one way or another. However, a subject emerged in the fall, forcing candidates to position themselves and sometimes causing fights: the abolition of the audiovisual license fee, intended to finance television channels (France Télévisions, Arte, France 24, etc.) and public radio station (Radio France), as well as the National Audiovisual Institute (INA).
The first to draw was Marine Le Pen. In September 2021, the candidate of the Rassemblement national proposed to privatize public broadcasting – and therefore to end the license fee – in order to retrocede ” immediately “ several billion euros of purchasing power to the French. The following month, it was his far-right competitor Eric Zemmour who took over, calling during a meeting in Béziers (Hérault) to remove the main resource of France Télévisions and Radio France, qualified as “incredible propaganda machines, at the service of an ideology that hates France and the French”. Since then, Eric Zemmour has also positioned himself in favor of privatization, his team specifying that it would concern France 2, France Inter and France Info.
But the surprise came from Emmanuel Macron who, during a debate in Poissy (Yvelines), on March 7, in turn pledged to “remove fee” audiovisual if he were re-elected as President of the Republic on 24 April. A choice, argues the Head of State, “consistent with the abolition of the housing tax”to which the fee is attached and which no household will have to pay from 2023. The fee “is a tax that no longer corresponds to reality [des usages avec les smartphones]unfair because blind to your income”added Mr. Macron in a campaign video published a few days later.
Concern of professionals
Extended in 2009 to all households subject to housing tax and having a television set, which represents approximately 27.6 million taxpayers, the contribution to public broadcasting is nevertheless an essential means of financing for public radio channels. and television. Amounting to 138 euros (88 euros overseas), revisable every year by Parliament to take inflation into account, the fee made it possible to collect 3.8 billion euros in 2020, of which 600 million paid directly by the State in compensation for the exemptions granted to certain groups. The cost of its collection, the subject of much criticism, is estimated at just over 28 million euros.
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