French Finance Chief Touts Green Tax Plan to Hold Off Yellow Vests

(Bloomberg) -- French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire proposed allocating all taxes on fossil fuel and carbon emissions to financing the climate transition, with the aim of avoiding another wave of protests in the country over the cost of living. 

President Emmanuel Macron’s finance minister said the government had gone about green taxation the “wrong way” and provoked the so-called Yellow Vest protests by raising taxes on diesel too fast. 

With just over six months to go until presidential elections, and as French households face a surge in energy costs, Le Maire said that if the government wants to move fast it must “systematically help workers” with the cost of reducing carbon emissions. 

“Out of transparency and justice, in the coming years, it will be necessary to say that all tax revenue from CO2 and fossil fuels should come back euro-for-euro to the climate transition,” Le Maire said at the Transition Forum in Nice. 

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