A little water at the start of a fire. Gabriel Attal did not come empty-handed this Tuesday April 2 to the weekly meeting of Renaissance deputies. The Prime Minister announced to his family the launch of a parliamentary mission on the “taxation” of annuities, led by the general budget rapporteur, Jean-René Cazeneuve and tasked with making proposals by June. “We are going to resolve this debate together, because we must not suffer, but we must be on the offensive” to “move forward in a coordinated, coherent manner”, explained the tenant of Matignon. The deputies of the presidential camp are ostensibly cajoled. Embarked by the executive in the preparation of the 2025 finance bill. “A bored MP is a dangerous MP”, judges a former minister. It’s time to occupy them.
Gabriel Attal, the man with contradictory injunctions. The Prime Minister is dealing with a majority tormented by the unemployment insurance reform and worried about a poorly distributed effort to reduce the public deficit. This anxiety grips the historic Macronists, hardly at ease with the right-wing transformation of Emmanuel Macron. It goes back to the boss of Modem, François Bayrou, or the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivetin favor of taxing the “richest” or “profits resulting from an exceptional situation”.
The head of government must give them guarantees… while setting the framework for the debate. This parliamentary mission is a concession as much as a foreclosure. “Attal is the guardian of the temple on the sequencing of announcements, recently slipped a minister. We cannot have every day a minister who writes a book, a deputy who comes out on something… He is there to call the line and avoid brothelization.”
“We are not fighting against capital, but against rents”
Prime Minister Attal refuses any tax increase. The majority leader listens to the tax requests of the wealthiest. Gabriel Attal is advancing on this crest line with the explosion of the public deficit. Here, every word counts. Thus, the mission launched by the executive concerns the taxation of “rents” – a term with pejorative connotations – and not “superprofits” or “superdividends”. We should not tarnish the pro-business image of the executive. “This is our philosophy,” defends MP Nadia Haï, member of this task force. “We are not fighting against capital, but against rents. We are pro-productivity.”
This strategy was outlined on March 27 by Gabriel Attal. The tenant of Matignon had refused on TF1 any increase in taxes for “businesses” and the “middle classes”, while rejecting the slightest “dogma” on the taxation of superprofits. He then recalled that energy companies and biology laboratories had already been subject to a specific tax.
“Going heads to tails brings back a feeling of excitement”
Of this declaration, we must especially remember the first part. The executive may well grant a few concessions, it will not deviate from its line. There is no question of increasing taxation, a Macronist totem since 2017. “What are Macron’s political assets in terms of balance sheet? It is the economic attractiveness of the country, the drop in unemployment, and the reduction in taxation, assures a regular interlocutor of the Head of State. Increasing taxes now would be an absolute renunciation of everything, in terms of the balance sheet.” “Going heads to tails brings back a feeling of excitement,” adds a Renaissance executive.
We move the steering wheel a little, without changing lanes. The refusal of a global tax increase – combined with specific taxation of certain income – could suit the Renaissance group and its left wing. It is still necessary that the mission launched by Gabriel Attal does not pursue the objective assigned to the commissions: to bury the problems. “This thing is smoke and mirrors,” says a Renaissance deputy. “Just a way of saying that we are being listened to.”
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