Fuel: who is the aid “of 100 euros per car per year” that Emmanuel Macron promises?

Welcome new help. While fuel prices continue to soar since the start of summer and faced with the categorical refusal of distributors to sell at a loss, Emmanuel Macron announced this Sunday, in an interview given jointly to the news of TF1 and France 2 new aid for “French people who work and who need to ride”.

“I asked the government, in the upcoming budget, to continue to support French people who work and who need to ride,” he expressed, adding that it was “a mechanism” which must “ be limited to workers. Concretely, this aid - like that already put in place at the start of the year - will concern "the 50% of the lowest-income households" who need their vehicle (car, two-wheeler, three-wheeler, thermal and/or electric) to get to their place of work.

That is to say those who are located in “the first five deciles”. Knowing that the fifth decile limit corresponds to an annual reference tax income per unit of less than 14,700 euros, which corresponds approximately to less than 1,314 euros net per month for a single person, 3,285 euros net per month for a couple with one child or 5,255 euros net per month for a couple with three children.

“It is very limited, but it is much more relevant,” said the Head of State, who thus assumes not to help “households which do not need it” or “comfort trips ". “We help those who need it to work,” he continued. Before assuring: “Because beyond the pressure we are putting, we cannot put some of our compatriots who need to drive to work facing prices that are sustainably high.”

This compensation will be paid “per car and per year” and not per household. Which means that each member of a low-income couple who uses their vehicle to get to their place of work will receive this aid of a maximum of 100 euros. The couple will therefore be able to benefit from 200 euros in assistance with the purchase of fuel. A meager compensation when we know that a single fill-up is currently around 100 euros, with a liter of gasoline at 2 euros. But according to figures from the Ministry of the Economy, this represents aid of around 10 euro cents per liter over the year, for a person who travels on average 12,000 kilometers per year.

On paper, around 10 million households are “theoretically” affected, but probably not as many in reality. As a reminder, similar aid had already been put in place for the year 2022 - but paid in January 2023 - and had concerned "only" 4.3 million households for an amount of 430 million euros. For 2024, the executive is counting on the same order of magnitude: “This measure is intended for around 5 million households,” estimated Bercy on Sunday evening, refuting the idea of ​​a return to “whatever it takes ".

Especially since, to benefit from it, you must make the request, communicate your tax number, the vehicle's registration plate number, your insurance certificate as well as a declaration on the honor certifying that it is used for commuting.

And if this aid has just been announced with great fanfare by the President of the Republic at the end of September, it cannot be paid before 2024. Because, as the Head of State specified in his speech, still does it need to be included in the finance bill (PLF) for the 2024 budget, and voted on by Parliament?

Last January, the aid announced took over from the return to the pump for all, stopped on December 31, 2022, and began to be paid during the month of January. Eligible people could then request it between January 16 and February 28, before this possibility was extended until March 31, 2023 on a form posted online on the impots.gouv.fr website. In fact, almost half of the 10 million households eligible for this bonus had not yet requested it by the deadline.

Nevertheless, this aid had “hit its target” according to the expression used by Bercy, while up to 88% of eligible people had requested it in Pas-de-Calais. Or 240,000 requests. The same orders of magnitude were observed in all rural departments. Only the city of Paris was an exception, with only 9% of eligible people having applied. A low figure which can be explained in particular, according to the Ministry of the Economy, by the fact that low-income Parisians do not own a car.