The relationship that links Paris to its twelve overseas communities is that of an endless restart. After the riots which struck New Caledonia in May, painful reminiscences of the “events” which tore the archipelago apart in the 1980s, Martinique was in turn affected by unrest. As in Nouméa, it is difficult not to see in the clashes which have shaken the island for a month the echo of another social conflict. In 2009, a general strike in Guadeloupe spread to Martinique and Guyana. The high cost of living was already the driving force behind the anger. Fifteen years later, nothing has changed.
According to an INSEE calculation dating from 2022, food prices are 28% higher in Reunion, 40% in Martinique and 42% in Guadeloupe. A report from the Court of Auditors explains this discrepancy by high margins, limited competition, but also by the dock dues, a tax inherited from the Ancien Régime taxing products arriving by the ocean.
80% of food imported from mainland France
A factor “among many others” explaining the high cost of living in Martinique, where 80% of food is imported from mainland France. To improve the situation, the magistrates are recommending in particular a “profound reform” of this tax representing a windfall equivalent to almost a third of the revenue of overseas municipalities.
Here again there is an air of déjà vu: a year before the strikes which were going to paralyze the Antilles, the Secretary of State for Overseas Territories at the time, Yves Jégo, proposed eliminating the dock dues on the essential foodstuffs in Reunion. Without finding a lasting compensation solution. It was 2008.