European Environmental Tax Policy: Proposal for a Policy Vision and a Legal Framework

Abstract

Analysis of all the policy declarations, realisations and proposals concerning European fiscal environmental policy instruments shows that the Community institutions in general and the European Commission in particular do not have a clear view on the development of a European environmental tax policy: in the absence of a general debate on this topic, there is no elaborated policy line and, as a consequence, all adopted and proposed European fiscal environmental policy instruments are "one-shots", which do not fit into a general framework. Therefore, in the discussion about the development of a European environmental tax policy, absolute priority must be given to the creation of a concrete European policy vision and the elaboration of a general European legal framework, on the basis of which European fiscal environmental policy instruments are being developed, proposed and adopted. In this article, a policy vision, as well as a legal framework, are proposed. A possible and desirable policy vision is one by which the Community, via ambitious ecological goals and regulating fiscal environmental policy instruments, resolutely chooses in favour of an environmental tax policy in which the protection of the environment, and not the creation of new jobs or financial means, is the central goal. A possible and desirable legal framework, corresponding to this policy vision, is one by which the Community adopts the following three pillars, based on the principles of subsidiarity and integration: pillar one, a "clean-up" of the present environment-unfriendly fiscal regulations in regional and national (fiscal) legislation conducted at European level; pillar two, the use of ecological fiscal incentives, again conducted at European level; pillar three, a European-conducted use of environmental taxes.