France delays fuel tax hikes

Hear the anger on the streets: PM

PARIS, Dec 4, (Agencies): France’s prime minister on Tuesday suspended planned increases to fuel taxes for six months in response to weeks of sometimes violent protests, the first major U-turn by President Emmanuel Macron’s administration after 18 months in office.

In announcing the decision, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said anyone would have “to be deaf or blind” not to see or hear the anger on the streets over a policy that Macron has defended as critical to combating climate change.

“The French who have donned yellow vests want taxes to drop, and work to pay. That’s also what we want. If I didn’t manage to explain it, if the ruling majority didn’t manage to convince the French, then something must change,” Philippe said in a TV address.

Delay

As well as a six-month delay in introducing the carbon-tax increases, Philippe said the period would be used to discuss other measures to help the working poor who rely on vehicles to get to work and go to the shops.

Earlier officials had hinted at possible increases to the minimum wage, but Philippe did not make any such commitment. He warned citizens, however, that they could not expect better public services and to pay lower taxes, and that therefore compromises needed to be made on both sides.

The so-called “yellow vest” movement, which started on Nov 17 as a social-media protest group named for the high-visibility jackets all motorists in France must have in their cars, has focused on denouncing a squeeze on household spending brought about by Macron’s taxes on fuel.

However, over the past three weeks the protests have evolved into a wider, broadbrush anti-Macron uprising, with many criticising the president for pursuing policies they say favour the rich and do nothing to help the poor, and some violent fringe groups calling for the president to go.

The French government’s decision to suspend a planned increase in fuel tax in the face of violent protests does not put in jeopardy its budget commitments, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday.

“The president has set a course focused on respect of our European commitments, reducing spending, debt and taxes. We will stay the course,” Le Maire said in Brussels on the sidelines of an EU finance ministers meeting.

Meanwhile, a grassroots protest movement in France has ballooned and radicalized, unleashing anger that devastated the heart of Paris in weekend riots and revealed a fracture in the country between the haves and have-nots.

Tough talk by Macron, who has been roundly blamed for the chaos, isn’t likely to mend the growing sense of social injustice.

Discontent about the rising cost of living among the “little people,” as many protesters call themselves, had been growing, along with a sense of marginalization. The approach of Macron’s fuel tax increases in January, meant to wean the French off fossil fuels, has caused things to snap.

Violence

The weekend violence in Paris, in which more than 130 people were injured and over 400 were arrested, was the worst in the country in decades, officials have said.

The protesters say they want to level a playing field that they believe is tipped in favor of the elite and well-off city dwellers.

The fuel tax “was the spark,” said Thierry Paul Valette, a Paris protest coordinator, in an interview. “If it hadn’t been (that), it would have been something else.”