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Why this weekend might be a good time to fill up your car in France

Ahead of the busiest weekend of the year on the French roads, some supermarket chains are offering discounts on fuel.

Published: 26 July 2022 16:45 CEST
Why this weekend might be a good time to fill up your car in France
A client fills her car with gas at a petrol station in Ciboure, southwestern France (Photo by GAIZKA IROZ / AFP)

The chassé-croisé is upon us. It is the weekend when vacationers heading off to enjoy their holidays in August share the roads with those coming home from their July trips. This year, like years previous, there will be heavy traffic on French motorways, particularly on Saturday.

Luckily, there are a few options for drivers to save on fuel amid the long traffic jams – or simply take the chance to fill up locally if you’re not planning on travelling.

Fuel prices remain very high and France – and would be even higher without the government’s 18c per litre discount – on Tuesday average prices stood at €1.93 a litre for diesel, €1.91 for unleaded (SP95) and €1.85 for E10.

The grocery store chain E. Leclerc will be foregoing some profits this weekend by offering its fuel “at cost.” The discount will be available for customers at all Leclerc filling stations – of which there are about 600 –  from Thursday July 28th until Saturday July 30th. Keep in mind the discount will no longer be in effect on Sunday, July 31st.

READ MORE: French Expression of the Day: Chassé-croisé

The offer is intended to help consumers counter rising cost of living and inflation, particularly on one of the biggest driving weekends of the year. 

In terms of savings, motorists should not get too excited, however. A litre of fuel might be around €0.02 to €0.10 cheaper at participating stations.

You can find a station near you HERE. 

READ MORE: MAP: Where to find the cheapest fuel in France

The discount plan for consumers comes as France’s parliament debates the current fuel rebate, which could be increased from €0.18 to €0.30 per litre of gasoline from September 1st.

Head of E. Leclerc, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, has also announced that this may be the final ‘at-cost’ operation, arguing that such operations will no longer be possible when the new climate law takes effect on August 22nd. The law will regulate advertising related to the environment, including a ban on the advertising of fossil fuels. 

Leclerc is not the only supermarket chain to offer fuel discounts. The Casino group will continue offering its discount until the end of August. As it stands, consumers can benefit from from a voucher card after spending €120 at the Casino store. The voucher can be picked up at the reception desk of any participating Casino store, and allows customers to get one litre of fuel at the price of €0.85. 

The TotalEnergies group has also announced they will apply a fuel discount of €0.20 starting in September.

If you are looking to save on fuel, you can also use this map to avoid soaring prices.

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COST OF LIVING

What is considered a good salary in Paris?

The higher-paying jobs are heavily concentrated in the French capital, but set against that is the high cost of living - especially the cost of renting or buying a home. So what is considered a 'high-earner' in Paris?

Published: 25 June 2024 16:51 CEST
What is considered a good salary in Paris?

Centrist Renaissance candidate Sylvain Maillard, running for re-election in France’s snap parliamentary elections, was trying to highlight the high cost of living in the capital in a debate on RMC Radio 

“You have extremely expensive rents [in Paris], between €1,500 and €1,700, and then there are all the charges and taxes to pay,” he said.

But what most people seized on was his comment that anyone earning €4,000 a month after tax would not be considered rich in Paris – he predictably was accused of being out of touch with French people’s lives.

There’s no doubt that €4,000 a month is good salary that most people would be happy with – but how much do you need to earn to be considered ‘rich’ in Paris?

National averages

Earlier this year, the independent Observatoire des Inégalités calculated poverty and wealth levels in France.

READ ALSO How much money do you need to be considered rich in France?

According to its calculations, to be considered ‘rich’ in France, a single person with no dependants needs to earn more than €3,860 per month, after taxes and social charges. Around eight percent of single workers have this sum deposited into their bank balance every month, it said.

A total of 23 percent of workers take home €3,000 or more every month, while the top 10 percent clear €4,170. 

To be in the top one percent of earners in France in 2024, one person must bring in at least €10,000 per month. After taxes and social charges.

The median income – the median is the ‘middle value’ of a range of totals – of tax households in mainland France is €1,923 per month after taxes and social charges, according to INSEE 2021 data, which means that a ‘rich’ person earns about twice as much as a person on the median income, according to the Observatoire.

Paris situation

About 75 percent of people living in Paris earn less than €4,458 per month, according to Insee data – so according to those calculations, 25 percent of Parisians earn the equivalent of the top 10 percent in France. 

But that city-wide average still hides a wide degree of variation. In the sixth arrondissement, the median income is €4,358 per month, after tax. In the seventh, it’s €4,255.  Further out, those bringing home €4,600 a month in the 19th and 20th arrondissements are among the top 10 percent in wealth terms.

But still, the median income in Paris is €2,639, significantly higher than the €1,923 France-wide median.

That would mean – using the Observatoire des Inégalités’ starting point for wealth – that a Paris resident, living on their own, would have to bring home €5,278 per month to be considered ‘rich’. 

France is a heavily centralised country, with many of the highest-paying industries concentrated within the capital, meaning there is much more opportunity to secure a high-wage job if you live in Paris.

Cost of living

Even these figures should all be taken with a pinch of salt because of the relatively high cost of living in the capital, compared to elsewhere in France. Paris is objectively an expensive place to call home.

In 2023, France Stratégie published a report on the disposable income of French households, after housing, food and transport costs were deducted. It found that, on average, people living in the Paris region had more left to spend, due to higher incomes and despite the fact that housing costs more.

It’s the income paradox in action. A person with a take-home salary of €4,000 per month has more money to spend if they live and work outside Paris. But they’re much more likely to earn that much if they live and work in Paris, where it’s not as valuable. 

Someone who earns a ‘rich-level’ salary in Paris might not appear rich – because they live in an expensive area, and a surrounded by very wealthy people in property that’s out of reach all-but the fattest of wallets. But they’re still earning more than twice the median income in France.

And that’s what Sylvain Maillard was getting at, clumsily as he may have expressed it.

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