Consultations begin to define the scope of aid to businesses

"There have been about fifteen reports on this issue over the past twenty years," with different conclusions, High Commissioner Clément Beaune reminded AFP, adding that three meetings have been scheduled: Wednesday, May 6 and June 3.

A Senate inquiry committee had estimated in July that these subsidies would amount to €211 billion in 2023, a record figure. The left immediately called for large companies to be taxed more heavily, while employers' organizations denounced the Senate's assessments as a mishmash of different approaches.

A week later, using a different scope, the High Commission itself concluded that the amount of aid would be 111,9 billion euros in 2023, almost half as much.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu then tasked Mr. Beaune at the end of November with a consultation mission aimed at drawing up "a map and a consensual definition of public aid to businesses".

The chosen method is "unprecedented," noted Mr. Beaune, by bringing together around the table representative trade union and employer organizations, parliamentarians from the finance and social affairs committees of the Senate and the National Assembly, members of the Court of Auditors and the administration.

"The idea is not to add a report to reports, a number to numbers, and confusion, but on the contrary to converge on principles of definition and get out of the numbers war," he explained.

He hoped it would then be possible "to steer the debate towards the main topic: how it evolves and how we evaluate it."

A document listing the various aid schemes and their amounts could thus be attached each year to the draft finance and social security financing bills, in order to be able to compare their evolution from one year to the next.

Interviewed by AFP before the meeting, Medef president Patrick Martin expressed hope that it would help "deflate some of the inflated expectations" regarding the amount of aid. "We can question the effectiveness of a number of measures," he said, "but at some point (it would be good) to put down the guns and take stock of things seriously."