At the supermarket checkout, at the gas pump or when paying your electricity bill… It’s almost impossible to ignore inflation. “Over one year, consumer prices increased by 4.8%, after 4.5% in March”, indicates INSEE.
France had never experienced such a rate since 1985. The cause: “the acceleration in the prices of services (3.0% after 2.3%), food (3.8% after 2.9% ) and manufactured products (2.6% after 2.1%)”, specifies the French institute.
Between the economic response to the health crisis and the war in Ukraine, the purchasing power of the French is more than ever threatened. This is why it is today the main concern of 46% of the national population, as revealed by a CSA survey for the Journal Du Dimanche.
For his second term as head of the country, Emmanuel Macron has therefore entrusted this thorny and relatively urgent file to his new Prime Minister: Elisabeth Borne.
The Government “of course has the concerns of the French”. In any case, this is what the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, announced on the set of TF1 on Friday May 20. Less than a week after her appointment as head of government, she announced the color: “The first bill to be examined will relate to these subjects of purchasing power”.
This “inflation plan”, also called the amending finance bill (PLFR), had already been announced by the previous government. It should be proposed to parliament in June, just after the legislative elections.
Find out what the executive plans to protect the purchasing power of the French.
To protect the purchasing power of the French, the government plans to set up financial aid for consumers. This is a food voucher. The objective is to enable the most modest households and the middle classes to meet the additional costs generated by inflation.
The executive could also extend or improve mechanisms that are already in place. This is the case of the tariff shield, which protects consumers from the rise in regulated gas and electricity tariffs or from “the reduction in fuel prices [which] will be extended”, as Elisabeth Borne indicates, on TF1.
What are the other boosts planned by the government?
The executive does not intend to tackle consumer prices. He also wants to give a financial boost by raising the income and reducing the expenses of the French. Here’s how he plans to go about it:
A series of measures that leaves the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, perplexed. This “inflation” plan is a kind of “whatever the cost” of cruising”, he testifies on France Inter. A bill “that we cannot afford collectively”.