Pierre Habbard
Sarkozy’s cabinet discussed this week its long-awaited Bill to create a French financial transaction tax. The announcement has been met with measured enthusiasm by FTT campaigners. And indeed – at last! – the French are putting words into action. Although reference to development and climate change financing is missing, the French bill could well become a first step toward a wider Eurozone FTT based on Barroso’s EU Directive. And extreme forms of speculative behaviour such as High Frequency Trading (HFT) are targeted explicitly by the project.
But this is electoral time inFrance. Sarkozy is a soon-to-be-declared candidate for his re-election, but he is trailing behind the socialist candidate and is feeling the heat from the far right. His “mini-Tobin” tax may be welcome from a strict FTT campaigning perspective, but it still needs to be contemplated within broader policy context.
