Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy, spoke this Thursday, August 24 during his back-to-school speech in Alex (Haute-Savoie). The former member of the Republicans promised an economic and tax policy favorable to companies.
“I want to reassure all those who have supported us for more than six years,” he insisted, speaking during a visit to a factory of furniture manufacturer Fournier. “You can count on us, we will not deviate an inch from the only economic policy that has given the best results that France has known for 40 years: the policy of supply. »
The questioning of this policy is a fear of employers, in particular because of the spreading over four years of the abolition of a production tax, the Contribution on the added value of companies (CVAE), which Bruno Le Maire has confirmed. This tax, which weighs particularly heavily on industrial companies, was halved this year and was to be abolished in 2024, but the government has chosen to spread out its abolition, at a cost reduced to one billion euros per year for finances. public. “At the end of 2027, the CVAE will be definitively abolished”, however assured the minister in front of an audience made up in part of local industrialists.
Anxious to better protect patents and intellectual property, Bruno Le Maire announced that he wanted to strengthen the control of foreign investments, by extending it “to the activities of extraction and transformation of critical raw materials”, recalling that China has made even. “These sectors have become decisive for the sovereignty of the country”, he said, adding that the control, automatic when a non-European investor buys 10% or more of the capital of a firm, would be extended to the acquisition of stakes in “French branches of foreign companies”.
For entrepreneurs, the Minister also said he wanted to “continue to simplify” and to do so, “assemble the foundations of simplification in the next three months”. He also said he wanted to work “for the rapid development of employee ownership”.
Bruno Le Maire finally insisted on the need to “continue the reform of unemployment insurance” and to widen the difference between labor income and benefits, with the aim of reducing the unemployment rate from 7% to 5 %. “Work will remain the cardinal value of our economic policy,” he hammered, castigating “all the fads of returning to retirement at 60 and working less [which] have led to our collective impoverishment.”
