France: focus on the tax on HFCs

The tax on HFCs proposed by the French Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition Nicolas Hulot last July was recently debated in the French National Assembly and the Senate. In the last issue of our newsletter, we announced that the tax did not appear in the public finance draft bill of 2018. But in October and November, amendments were proposed during the debate on the public finance bill in the National Assembly. The first amendment proposed an entry into force of the tax on January 1, 2018, with a taxation of €15 by tonne CO2 equivalent. This was rejected. The second amendment was debated in November and an entry into force on January 1, 2019 was proposed. This was adopted in order to be debated by the Senate, which finally rejected the amendment.

The tax should therefore be discussed again during 2018 in order to appear in the public finance bill of 2019, but there is, for now, no certainty regarding its implementation.