French economist Gabriel Zucman has invited US Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a gathering in Paris on taxing the super-rich.
The event, due to take place on November 21, is billed for now as a summit against the “international oligarchy”, Politico reported on September 10.
Zucman has also invited New York mayor Zohran Mamdani and his close aide Morris Katz. Paris mayor Emmanuel Grégoire, a Socialist who drew on Mamdani’s campaign in his own bid for city hall, would also address the event.
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and economist Thomas Piketty, Zucman’s former doctoral supervisor, were named as co-organisers. The programme would focus on three themes: Media and online platforms, artificial intelligence and the taxation of billionaires.
Announcing the summit, Zucman said the explosion of extreme wealth and the concentration of power that came with it were destabilising societies. He said the aim was to give an objective assessment of that new reality and help build international alliances that would allow democratic forces to prevail.
The organisers want to put wealth inequality and tax justice back at the centre of public debate ahead of France’s next presidential election. The first round is scheduled for April 18, 2027.
The summit is set to follow within days the publication of a new book by Zucman bearing the same title.
Zucman, who directs the EU Tax Observatory, a research body launched with European Commission support in 2021, rose to prominence in France in 2025 with his proposal for a 2 per cent annual minimum tax on fortunes above €100 million.
The measure, which would have hit about 1,800 households, cleared the National Assembly in February 2025 but was blocked by the Senate that June. MPs rejected it again during budget talks in October 2025.
The proposal split French politics. LVMH chief executive Bernard Arnault, the country’s richest man, accused Zucman in September 2025 of wanting to destroy the French economy.
Across the Atlantic, Zucman has backed Proposition 40, a California ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5 per cent tax on the state’s roughly 200 billionaires.
Its sponsors, drawing on revenue estimates co-authored by Zucman, project it would raise about $100 billion (€86 billion) over five years. California governor Gavin Newsom has opposed the measure, which goes to a vote on November 3, weeks before the Paris gathering.
Zucman has increasingly framed the issue in political rather than fiscal terms. At a tax forum with Mamdani in New York on April 15, he called the clash between democracy and oligarchy “the defining battle of the 21st century”.
