You have to fill the boxes. A week after relaunching the State to help make up for the losses in public transport in Ile-de-France Mobilités, chaired by Valérie Pécresse, decided this Monday, September 27 to suspend its payments to the RATP and at the SNCF.
The regional transport authority Ile-de-France Mobilités, chaired by the president of the Ile-de-France region Valérie Pécresse, announced on Monday that it had suspended its payments to the RATP and the SNCF, for lack of having found a agreement with the State from which it is claiming a subsidy of 1.3 billion euros to compensate for losses linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Ile-de-France Mobilités has suspended payments to RATP and SNCF”, thus indicated a spokesperson for the regional institution chaired by Valérie Pécresse, specifying that “tight negotiations continue with Matignon”. In the midst of a health crisis, Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) – the organizing authority for public transport in Île-de-France – indeed accuses “massive financial losses” since the start of the coronavirus epidemic until nowadays.
For the State, IDFM is failing in its duties
A decision which made the highest summit of the State react. The next day, this Tuesday, September 28, the government – through the voice of the Ministry of Transport – assured that IDFM “was failing in its duties” by suspending its payments to the RATP and the SNCF, for lack of having found an agreement with him on compensation for losses related to Covid-19.
“IDFM is bound by a contract with SNCF and RATP. With her declarations, she is failing in her duties, ”the Ministry of Transport said, adding that to its knowledge, there was“ no budgetary impossibility for IDFM to honor these payments ”.
1.3 billion euros to be filled
According to IDFM, the decline in the group’s “two main resources” – that is to say “tariff revenues and mobility payments” – was estimated at 1.3 billion euros in 2021, including 1 billion euros alone. for tariff revenue. A financial gap that it is out of the question to fill “by reducing the investments essential to the development of transport” or “by reducing the supply of transport”.
By way of comparison, IDFM recalls that other international metropolises, such as London or New York, received subsidies amounting to about 60% of their deficit in 2020, against 10% for Paris. Arguments that Valérie Pécresse recently made in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Jean Castex on June 4, demanding a subsidy of 1.3 billion euros.
A year ago, at the end of the summer, Valérie Pécresse had already had to meet with the head of government to get him to agree to compensate for these losses. “Ile-de-France Mobilités made a proposal which seems to us to be a constructive proposal: that the State grant us – as it did for Air France – a repayable advance, with a deferred repayment”, she had then claimed.
Ultimately, IDFM had stopped paying RATP and SNCF and the State ended up granting a subsidy and a zero-interest loan last September to cover the cash flow hole. According to the president of the region, this agreement provided for “a review clause in 2021 and 2022 if the crisis were to continue”. She also made a commitment not to increase the price of the Navigo subscription.
