Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

DRIVING

Which parts of France have the cheapest fuel prices?

Average fuel prices continue to spike in France, but you'll pay a lot more in certain regions rather than others.

Published: 10 May 2022 12:03 CEST
Updated: 14 May 2022 09:23 CEST
Which parts of France have the cheapest fuel prices?
A driver prepares to fill his vehicle with gasoline in Montpellier (Photo by Pascal GUYOT / AFP)

Fuel prices in France are on the rise again – almost reaching €2 per litre on average – after several weeks of decline.

According to France’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, a litre of diesel, which is the most sold fuel in France, is now worth an average of €1.9438. This marks a €0.06 increase from last week, and the highest price for fuel in France since March 25th, when the price of fuel exceeded €2 per litre on average.

After the rise in fuel prices in March, the French government introduced a €0.15 to €0.18 per litre fuel discount, and prices began to fall again.

Boursorama reports that as of today, the average price for a litre of super SP 95 has reached €1.86 (an increase of €0.635 cents) and a litre of SP 95-E10 has reached €1.82 (an increase of €0.06).

Where is fuel cheapest and most expensive in France?

Fuel prices are highest in the Ile-de-France region and Corsica, specifically in the Hauts-de-Seine département and in Paris proper. For Corsica, the region’s geographic position as an island is mostly to blame for its high fuel prices. Lozère, a departement in France’s southern Occitanie region also has high average fuel prices, with the price for diesel specifically averaging around €2.05 per litre. 

If you cut France diagonally, you will start to see sharper differences in the price of fuel. Fuel prices are generally lowest in western France, as the region is not home to as many autoroutes (motorways, freeways), where fuel tends to be most expensive.

Brittany in the the north-west and the départements along the west coast also benefit from a higher volume of service stations, with about 700 more than the regions in the south and south east. For the southern, eastern part of the diagonal, the price of fuel is typically higher, as there are more autoroutes and more rural départements (less service stations overall). 

The current cheapest service station in France is actually located in the Loire-Atlantique département, at the Leclerc in the city of Guérande. There, the fuel is priced at €1.73 per litre of SP95-E10 and €1.83 per litre of diesel, which is respectively €0.09 and €0.11 less than the current national average.

If you are looking for where to find the most affordable fuel stations in France, Capital.fr has an interactive map where you can click on your département to see the cheapest service station near you. Typically, the rule of thumb is that autoroutes are most expensive, but heading for supermarkets and automated petrol stations might save you a few euros. 

READ MORE: MAP: How to avoid paying too much for fuel when you’re driving in France

The French government’s efforts to provide fuel discounts, which came into effect on April 1st and will last for four months, have been significantly offset by the rise in inflation, according to French daily Le Parisien.

Fuel prices had been on the rise prior to the start of the war in Ukraine, as a result of the post-pandemic global economy. A large reason as to why they are currently spiking is likely due to the price of oil itself, which is rising.

Currently, the price is $110 per barrel, which energy specialist Jean-Pierre Favennec explained to Europe 1 as also an impact of inflation, as the increase in prices at the pump “increases the costs of fuel distribution.”

Another explanation, however, is market panic after calls for a European embargo on Russian oil.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

JOHN LICHFIELD

OPINION: France’s economy is far from doomed, but not quite booming either

Depending on who you ask, France's economy is either booming or doomed - John Lichfield takes a look at who is right and where French finances are heading.

Published: 15 May 2024 11:12 CEST
OPINION: France's economy is far from doomed, but not quite booming either

France is booming. France is also doomed. Take your pick.

On a much-visited French news site Le Figaro this week, consecutive stories collided head on.

The first story reported that the annual ‘Choose France’ conference will bring a record number of foreign investments to French soil in 2024 (56 projects worth €15 billion). France is the most attractive country in Europe for foreign investment for the fifth year in succession.

The second story – an essay by the political commentator and pollster Jérôme Fourquet – said that the French economic model of the last 40 years, had “reached the end of the road and left the country in a cul-de-sac”.

France no longer “made anything”, the essay said. The economy was being kept alive by state and consumer spending, funded unsustainably by twin deficits of trade and public finance.

Which is true? Both, up to a point.

The Choose France foreign investment conference in Versailles this week will be the most successful since President Emmanuel Macron launched the project six years ago. France opened 200 more factories than it closed last year, returning to a modest trend of “re-industrialisation” interrupted by the Covid and Ukraine crises.

Jérôme Fourquet’s essay was brilliant but also over the top. It ignored some of the positive developments in France of recent years.

It suggested that France “made nothing” but also admitted that the country was a world leader in arms, cosmetics, perfume, luxury goods and wine.

France, Fourquet might have added, is also one of the world’s largest exporters of cereals. It holds a major part of Airbus, the world’s most successful plane-maker. Unlike the UK, it is still a train-maker and a car-maker, although both industries have declined.

All the same, the essay made good points about the “French model” created unconsciously over four decades by governments of Right and Left and only timidly changed by Emmanuel Macron’s Centre in the last seven years.

Fourquet defines the French model as “state-consumerist”, a mixture of excessive public spending and taxation and generous pensions and welfare payments which allow most French people to live reasonably well. Unfortunately, the high taxation is never enough to cover the public spending and the consumers consume more from abroad than the country exports.

The result is twin, expanding deficits in public spending and the balance of payments which cannot be sustained indefinitely.

In 2003, France’s accumulated state debt was the equivalent of 63 percent of annual GDP. It is now 110 percent of GDP. The annual service charge is about to overtake education as the single biggest item in the state budget.

In 2006, France’s trade deficit was €4.3 billion. In 2023, it was €99.6 billion (admittedly inflated by the high cost of oil and gas).

Fourquet says the cost and bureaucratic weight of the French state make creating businesses – and wealth and jobs – more difficult than in other EU countries. This is covered up by more state spending which, in turn, sustains consumer spending which, in turn, boosts the twin deficits. A vicious spiral.

He concedes that Macron has tried to chip away at the state in the last seven years. The President has also splashed the cash on pet projects and has done little to reduce the regulatory burden.

Rather than lighten the entire system, Macron suspends rules and norms when he wants to get stuff done (such as the rebuilding of Notre Dame cathedral). The success of his foreign investment drive is also partly based on “keys in hand” offers of low or no-regulation factory sites which are not always easily accessible to domestic investors.

Some of those criticisms are justified. Macron has not been the revolutionary that he promised to be in 2017. He has been a plodding state reformer, extending with some success the job-friendly policies introduced by President François Hollande. France being France, neither man gets any credit.

There are signs that the economic downturn late last year (and the explosion in the budget deficit) may have been a temporary set-back as Macron insisted. Growth in the first three months of this year exceeded expectations at 0.2 percent of GDP. Jobs are being created again. (More than 1 million extra jobs since pre-Covid days).

High energy costs are crippling business across Europe but they are lower in France than elsewhere. The boom in foreign investment in France has tended to be high in value but low in jobs. The industrious and energetic minister for industry and energy, Roland Lescure, says that is now changing.

One of the projects under discussion at Choose France is a home-grown plan for a €1.6 billion solar panel factory in the Rhône delta which would create 12,000 jobs.

So is it boom or is it doom?

Neither. There has been a gradual, positive shift in the French social-economic model in the last seven to ten years which Jérôme Fourquet plays down or ignores.

Macron promised to do far more but he has had to surmount to two international crises (Covid and Ukraine) and to adjust to two domestic revolts (Yellow Vests and pensions reform). His unpopularity is partly explained by his failure to sell a convincing narrative of reform; it is also explained by France’s obsession with “reform” (in the abstract) but hatred of all “reforms” (in detail).

But what are the alternatives? All the opposition forces, from far-left to far-right, offer policies which would preserve or worsen an unsustainable status quo.

Macron’s final three years are unlikely to achieve much in the way of new reforms. A recovery of the economy might warm attitudes to Macronism (a big ask) and allow his would-be successors in the Centre to block Marine Le Pen in 2027.

Otherwise, Le Pen’s zombie economics – extra spending, no new taxes, breaking the European single market – could tip a heavily indebted France into the abyss.

SHOW COMMENTS