In his finance bill (PLF) 2024, the French government announced a tax on airport concessionsas well as on motorways (which are both used for the most polluting mobility such as the plane and the car). The price of plane tickets should logically increase.
As part of the ecological transition, the measure should provide 600 million euros every year and will serve the “future plan for transport” launched by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne in February, primarily to support the development of the rail sector, considered less polluting. Taxing airports and highways would be ” best “ financing for investments “extremely high” And “imperatives” necessary in terms of ecological transition, supported Bruno Le MaireMinister of the Economy and Finance, during the presentation of the PLF on September 27.
But the government has taken precautions not to interfere with smaller regional airports. It expressly targets THE “long distance transport infrastructure”that is to say that the tax should affect the Paris airportswhich are not under concession, and some of the major French airports such as Nice, Marseille… Technically speaking, only airports whose operating income exceeds 120 million euros will be taxed. If an airport exceeds this threshold, it will be taxed for this excess. Another necessity for this tax, the average profitability of airport infrastructure in recent years must exceed 10%.
If there is no official new tax on plane tickets, the price of the latter should automatically increase. The group Paris airports (ADP) plans to gradually pass on, and from 2024, to airlines “around 75%” of the increase in costs linked to this tax, through an increase “over two to three years” royalties. Based on its historical numbers, ADP would have paid out in 2022 “around 100 million euros”, compared to a net profit of 516 million. The bill should be 120 million euros next year.
For its part, the Union of French Airports (UAF), “reserves the possibility of legal recourse” because for her, “this new tax is contradictory with the acceleration desired by all of the ecological transition”because this will lead airports to “slow down their investments”.
