“There has been a lot of misinformation” about the price of motorway tolls in 2024, warns Clément Beaune. The annual increase in tolls will be “less than 3%”, the Minister for Transport assured on Wednesday. This increase applied every February 1 was 4.75% on average this year, a consequence of inflation. “Next year, there will be an increase that will be limited, an increase that will be less than 3%,” promised the minister on RMC.
However, one of France’s main motorway concessionaires, Vinci, claimed that tolls would increase by 5% if a tax on motorway concessions planned in the 2024 draft budget was implemented. For Clément Beaune, “there have sometimes been a lot of lies linked to this tax on motorway concession companies. It has no impact on the evolution of tolls.”
The increase mentioned by Vinci, “it’s no”, insisted the minister: “it’s the State which in the end takes a legal text which validates this evolution of tolls”. Those who talk about a repercussion of the tax “are not telling the truth to the French”.
Highway tax
The tax on “long-distance transport infrastructure” decided by Bercy in the name of the ecological transition is supposed to bring in 600 million euros per year from 2024, of which three quarters of the revenue would come from the road sector and a quarter from the air, according to the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire.
This tax on motorways and certain airports “will also finance investments in electric terminals, it will also finance social leasing so that it will be cheaper to have an electric car, it will also finance the purchase of new trains” , explained Clément Beaune on Wednesday.
On November 13, the deputy general manager of Vinci and president of Vinci autoroutes, Pierre Coppey, described this tax as “a bad idea that we contest and that we will contest by all means”. “This will come down to administrative justice, constitutional justice and, where appropriate, European justice, but perhaps we will find a solution first,” he warned.