France plans tax cuts to appease yellow vest anger

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has called for quick tax cuts to appease the anger of yellow vest protesters across the country.

Philippe unveiled the results of a three-month "big debate" launched by President Emmanuel Macron in response to the demonstrations, giving ordinary people the chance to express their views on France's economy and democracy.

Tax cuts have been a key demand of the yellow vest ("gilets jaunes") movement that has taken to the streets in France every weekend since mid-November.

Initially the protesters demanded lower fuel taxes, but the movement quickly morphed into a general rejection of President Emmanuel Macron's economic policies.

The 41-year-old centrist Macron came to power in May 2017, promising pro-business reforms. He focused tax cuts on companies and high-earners in a bid to increase investment and lower unemployment.

The "Great National Debate" involved 10,000 meetings in community halls around the country, around two million online contributions and saw Macron join local events for nearly 100 hours in total.

"I intend to transform anger into solutions," he declared in an open letter to the country on Jan 13, which launched the exercise. It is now up to Macron himself to find concrete measures to translate the citizens' demands in the coming weeks.

Philippe said the debate "clearly shows us in which direction we need to go: we need to lower taxes and lower them faster". He said there was also public demand for more participatory democracy and more action to tackle climate change.

"We have reached a point where hesitating would be worse than an error, it would be an offence," Philippe added. "The need for change is so radical that any conservatism, any feebleness would be unforgiveable in my view."

Protesters last weekend marched to the La Defense business park in Paris to denounce "the art of tax optimization", keeping the weekend demonstrations alive amid a big police presence.

About 6,300 demonstrators nationwide, including 3,100 in Paris, were on the streets on Saturday afternoon, the 21st weekend in a row of protests, according to the Interior Ministry. That compared with 5,600 last week.

Large areas of Paris and several regional cities have been declared off limits to the protesters since an eruption of violence last month, when anarchists sacked and burned stores and restaurants on the Champs-Elysees boulevard.

France has the highest taxation rate among developed countries. Data from the OECD economic think-tank for 2017 shows France top, with taxes equivalent to 46.2 percent of national output, with Denmark second (46 percent) and Sweden third (44 percent).

But France also has the highest level of social spending, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

That spending was 31.2 percent of GDP in France in 2018; in second place was Belgium (28.9 percent) and third was Finland (28.7 percent). The UK figure was 20.6 percent.