Macron authorised the changes, which will see council tax double for owners on properties that are not their main residence, in the national budget in 2017. At the same time he pledged to abolish council tax for owner-occupiers, with the French government promising to make up the funding shortfall.

The tax raising initiative took immediate effect in Paris and a total of 1,151 French councils, towns and cities with a population of more than 50,000 are eligible to impose the tax, which can be up to 60% on top of the basic council tax rate.

Nice and Bordeaux have already introduced it, and the tax increase on second homes is popular in tourist hotspots, where short-term rentals are widely viewed as having distorted the local housing market. 

There are an estimated 3.4m second homes in France, 110,000 of them in Paris. The tax move does not affect the 200,000 Britons whose main homes are in France.

Report by Pat Sweet