Transport, Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Motorway concessions: Renationalise motorways and reverse past price increases
Direction of change: abolition of a scheme, compared with current law.
The lever. Management of motorways entrusted to private companies: ending or renegotiating the concessions, tolls, takeover by the State. Direction rule: ↑ concessions extended or expanded.
« Renationaliser les autoroutes, en revenant sur les hausses de prix passées, ainsi que les aéroports stratégiques »1Translation by the editorsRenationalise the motorways, reversing past price increases, as well as strategic airports
Encoding
Position linked to an option of the cost schedule, with no parameter to set: see the costing.
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The programme does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
€0bn
per year for the public accounts, zero cost.
The calculation
- Direct public operation at expiry (2031-2036) instead of new concessions — static, compared with the framework bill: Option costed by the source: a cost of €0bn per year.
Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. Reading adopted: renationalisation, with no date, means taking over the concessions when they expire (2031-2036), under direct public operation: zero static cost compared with the framework transport bill. Other reading: early buyout, €1.2bn to €1.6bn of interest a year (cost-schedule option). Same reading as for François Ruffin and Marine Tondelier. Not costed: the reversal of past price increases, with no reference year; each 10% cut in tolls costs about €1.3bn a year (cost-schedule option). Strategic airports, cited in the same sentence, fall under the nationalisations lever.
Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule
Current law. The historic concessions (more than 90% of the conceded network) expire between 2031 and 2036. The framework transport bill, adopted in the Senate and not yet finally passed, provides for new concessions of which about €2.5bn a year in revenue would be allocated to transport from 2032. The 2024 turnover of the concession companies is €12.8bn (ART). Since the LFI 2024, a tax on the operation of long-distance transport infrastructure has been allocated to AFIT up to €500m.
Horizon. Full year 2032. The buy-back is a financial transaction: it increases the debt by €45bn to €50bn once, and the deficit only through interest.
Limits. Buyback: same measure as the “motorway buyback” option of the nationalisations lever (overlap declared); interest is calculated at AFT rates of 2.73% to 3.14%. Profits captured by the State would have to be deducted: the Senate estimated dividends at about €40bn between 2022 and 2036, but dividends paid to shareholders do not become net public revenue after a buyback (corporate income tax, investment). The net figure may therefore become a gain, with no official costing. The Senate estimate dates from 2020 and mechanically moves closer to zero as expiry approaches. Direct public management at expiry: the assets revert to the State free of charge. Compared with the framework bill, which provides about €2.5bn per year for transport, the static balance is close to zero but depends on the arrangement. Tolls: 10% × €12.8bn (2024 turnover, ART summary).
- Sénat, rapport n° 709 (2019-2020) de la commission d'enquête sur le contrôle, la régulation et l'évolution des concessions autoroutières (pages 17 et 18 du PDF), 2020-09: « Au-delà de 2022, les dividendes versés atteindraient environ 40 milliards d’euros, dont 32 milliards pour Vinci et Eiffage, à comparer avec les coûts d’acquisition des sociétés. […] Prévu par les contrats de concession pour motif d’intérêt général, le rachat aurait un coût évalué par le ministère de l’économie et des finances entre 45 et 50 milliards d’euros. »
- Autorité de régulation des transports, synthèse des comptes des sociétés concessionnaires d'autoroutes 2024 (pages 1 et 6), 2025-12: « En effet, le chiffre d’affaires des sociétés concessionnaires d’autoroutes (SCA), qui s’établit à 12,8 milliards d’euros, a progressé de 4,3 %, principalement en raison de l’augmentation des tarifs. […] fin des contrats historiques, prévue entre 2031 et 2036 »
- Sénat, « L'essentiel » sur le projet de loi-cadre relatif au développement des transports (n° 394, 2025-2026), page 3, 2026-04: « le maintien de recettes de péage constantes permettrait de réorienter des financements vers la régénération des réseaux de transport ferroviaire, routier et fluvial, à hauteur d’environ 2,5 milliards d’euros. L’article 1er du projet de loi dispose à cet effet que les recettes publiques spécifiques aux concessions autoroutières sont affectées en totalité au financement des infrastructures de transport par la première loi de programmation à venir. »
- Développement des transports : le projet de loi-cadre sur les rails (Banque des territoires), 2026-02: « « le fléchage d'une partie des recettes issues des futures concessions autoroutières » ; « près de 2,5 milliards d'euros par an » »
How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.
- L’Avenir en commun (édition 2025), p. 49. Open the document at this page.
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