A minimum tax on the EU’s richest individuals will not discourage innovators and start-up founders from investing in the bloc, prominent economist Gabriel Zucman told POLITICO.

“Innovation does not depend on just a tiny number of wealthy individuals paying zero tax,” Zucman said in an interview at this year’s POLITICO 28 event.

The young economist has become a household name in France thanks to his proposal to have households worth more than €100 million pay an annual tax of at least 2 percent of the value of all their assets.

Critics of the tax warned about the risk of scaring investors out of the EU and that tech entrepreneurs could leave the bloc as they would be forced to pay a tax based on the market value of shares they own in their companies without necessarily having the liquidity to do so.

But Zucman rejected “the notion that someone […] would be discouraged to create a start-up, to innovate in AI because of the possibility that once that person is a billionaire, he or she will have to pay a tiny amount of tax.”

“Who can believe in that?” he scoffed.

The “Zucman tax” was one of the key demands by left-wing parties for France’s budget for next year. But the measure has been ignored by all France’s short-lived prime ministers, and rejected by the French parliament during ongoing budget debates.

But Zucman is not giving up and still promotes the measure, including at the EU level.

“This would generate about €65 billion in tax revenue for the EU as whole,” Zucman insisted.