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"The increase in the Navigo pass, a symbol of our inability to curb inflation"

2022-11-30T16:34:05.247Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - While the Ile-de-France region is studying the possibility of increasing the Navigo pass to 90 euros, Sébastien Laye believes that this measure would not be viable in the long term. According to him, our leaders should above all reflect on a strategy to stem inflation.


Sébastien Laye is an entrepreneur and associate researcher at the Thomas More Institute.

If getting around is a vital condition for Ile-de-France residents, insofar as one does not find a job on the sidewalk opposite but rather in one's region, it is still necessary to have infrastructures allowing fluid movements.

In Ile-de-France, the road and motorway system is creaking everywhere, while trains, metros and RER are having more and more difficulty operating normally (which makes the recent promise to extend the RER system to other cities).

In this already tense context, it is easy to understand why the threat of an increase in the price of the Navigo pass in 2023 would lay the groundwork for a new social crisis.

A Navigo which would increase according to the scenarios from 5 to 20 euros per month.

Today at 75.20 euros per month, it would rise to 90 euros in

absence of state aid or increase in the contribution of companies, and only 80 euros if an agreement is obtained according to Valérie Pecresse.

In any case, this level of increase would exceed current inflation in France.

A pass at almost 990 euros a year would symbolically reach the level of a month of a small salary….

It is appropriate here to recall where the budgetary difficulties come from and how the system is financed.

Firstly, major investment plans, with the purchase of new trains to better serve Ile-de-France residents, the opening of the Grand Paris Express lines, the extensions of RER E and Line 14, but also an increase in the energy bill, require new sources of financing, including an additional 750 million in 2023. The State intervened massively during the Covid to keep our deserted transport system afloat, but repayable advances are due from 2023, with 130 million euros to find there too.

It is therefore almost a billion that must be found for the 2023 financial year, which, et ceteris paribus (if nothing is changed) and without possible deficit,

However, if we look at the financing of the system, it is based on a tripartite contribution and without the State: currently, local authorities finance transport in the Ile-de-France region up to 12%, travelers 38% and businesses 50%.

This contribution from companies goes through the mobility payment, a tax on companies in the Ile-de-France region with more than 11 employees and which finance transport.

In reality, by often taking charge of the Navigo pass at 50% for their employees, companies contribute much more than 50% of the financing of the system.

The State, for its part, sometimes grants repayable advances, as during the Covid.

There is no point in speculating on massive infrastructure plans for 2030 or aligning virtuous statements on the environment and purchasing power, if only gasoline and fuel oil are subsidized.

Sebastien Laye

In times of inflation and purchasing power crisis, how to accept a new annual puncture of 150-200 additional euros per Ile-de-France resident using the transport network?

After having invested colossal sums for motorists and energy (tariff shields), and in full demand for energy transition (taking public transport and not each one's car in Ile de France is the most effective environmental measure, the simplest , and the most accepted by the population), the State can no longer discard.

There is no point in speculating on massive infrastructure plans for 2030 or aligning virtuous statements on the environment and purchasing power, if only gasoline and fuel oil are subsidized.

So what are the possible solutions?

Valérie Pécresse, very reactive on this sensitive subject, indicated that local authorities had already agreed to increase their contribution by 7.5%.

The increase in the mobility payment for companies in the same proportions is far from certain, the Senate having refused this increase.

We are not in favor of this given the significant weight of companies in current financing, and it seems to us more interesting to encourage companies to take more charge of the Navigo pass, beyond the current 50%, by offering an exemption. social security contributions for sums over 50%.

We should also think about an incentive mechanism for VSEs with less than 10 people, and the many self-employed and autoentrepreneurs in Ile de France.

Such a policy would contribute both to the struggle for purchasing power and also to the energy transition.

Part of the short-term solution must also come from the State, which can simply postpone the repayments of advances due in 2023 and 2024, in order to allow the system to return to balance.

Compared to aid for motorists, the ratio would simply be 1 to 50, for a territory concentrating one French person in eight... Finally, in our opinion, the explosion of property income around the new stations of the Grand Paris Express should raise questions : if part of the capital gains come from colossal investments by the public, the additional revenue from the property tax near these new future stations should also finance the system.

The worst is not yet certain for the Navigo pass in 2023, but this subject is a perfect illustration of the failures of strategic planning in France (transport system exhausted and designed for a much smaller population, unsuitable refundable advance procedures, financing of transport by taxes on companies) and the aporias of the policy of purchasing power: in a period of inflation, a government exhausts itself and burdens the financial future of the nation by wanting to meet all the needs, by wishing to protect each category.

It is necessary to curb the evil at the root, by fighting against inflation, and not by letting it live in order then to claim to protect the French….

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-11-30

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