Budget: the government is "inactive" on the ecological transition

Those who pollute with PFAS will pay (a little)

An amendment stipulates "the entry into force of the levy dedicated to water pollution by PFAS substances on March 1, 2026." An inspection mission on the financing of the decontamination of water intended for human consumption specifies that this principle would cost 100 euros per 100 grams of "perennial pollutants" discharged.

Generations Futures, which fights against chemical pollution, is not totally convinced: "It's rather good news," Yoann Coulmont, in charge of advocacy, told AFP, but his association would have preferred the text to be applied "as early as last year, and without waiting for the budget."

Regarding pollution cleanup, he describes a huge undertaking: "The costs of pollution cleanup represent billions of euros. This measure is therefore useful, but the priority remains to cut off the tap [of PFAS] and prevent it from accumulating in the environment because that increases the bill."

The association also regrets a lack of permanent facilities to analyze PFAS levels in water, without which it is not possible to know who is polluting and on what scale.

"Laxity" on plastic

The tax increase for the landfilling of non-hazardous waste has been revised downwards.

In addition, the plastic tax, provided for under a European directive, was removed from the budget amendments by the Senate last December and is absent from the text approved on Tuesday.

Émeline Notari, head of the ecological transition finance program at the Climate Action Network, regrets a certain laxity on the part of the government on this issue: "We can only deplore the fact that the plastic tax, included in the initial text, has been withdrawn." She denounces "a general tendency of the government not to go further in terms of ecological transition."

Electricity is more expensive than gas

While electricity is currently being promoted by the government to move France away from its dependence on fossil fuels, it is still taxed more heavily than gas, a situation that could continue for some time.

The government has retained an amendment removing the alignment of electricity and gas taxation on energy bills, a measure which had been adopted in the first reading in the Senate.

For Émeline Notari, "the fact that electricity is more expensive than gas is still a problem, especially for high-performance home renovations. We mustn't encourage energy poverty, but the government is closing the credit windows for Ma Prime Rénov'. Getting out of energy poverty requires a comprehensive system."

Solar energy taxed

The doubling of the Ifer (Fixed Tax on Network Companies) rate on photovoltaic power plants prior to 2021 is causing the sector to jump.

This amounts to "retroactively torpedoing the economic model of thousands of power plants", including those in which farmers and local communities have invested, denounces Jules Nyssen, the president of the Renewable Energy Union (SER), to AFP.

"This is a destruction of value after the fact" and a questioning of the word of the State, especially since Emmanuel Macron defended the EU as a sanctuary of the rule of law on Tuesday in Davos. "Is France an exception?" he argues in a post on LinkedIn.

The only relative consolation is that the article will only take effect from 2027 until 2029, to take into account the entry into force of the draft budget after January 1, 2026.

"Penny-pinching"

Climate Action Network concludes: "We have had some small victories, regarding PFAS, regarding taxation in terms of soil artificialization".

But for two budgets now "the ecological transition has been in a state of inertia, of regression, while there is a great expectation from the French on this subject. We are making penny-pinching savings on the ecological transition when we will pay for these savings three or four times in the years to come," warns Émeline Notari.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.