The climate gnome of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, will present a whole package of measures next Wednesday to ensure that the European Union will achieve the climate goals. It is already leaking that he wants a new flight tax, in which the EU wants to tax polluting kerosene more heavily all over Europe and increase the taxes on fuels in aviation, but also in shipping.
Timmermans never stops when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions. By 2030, the EU wants to reduce CO2 emissions by 55%, which means that a lot of measures need to be taken to achieve that target. And where various parties (seem to be) at least a little concerned about where the bill ends up, our own Timmerfrans doesn’t care at all.
He wants to reform flight taxes and make them considerably more expensive, reports Business AM. He also wants to gradually increase the tax on kerosene and other polluting fuels over a period of ten years. In addition, he believes there should also be taxes on the import of goods, taxed on the basis of CO2 emissions.
The chance that this will get through without a fight is small. It would mean that the consumer would receive a hefty bill for just about everything. Let’s not pretend that companies will lose even a cent of profit if this becomes the law. They simply pass everything on to the consumer.
The only way to escape this madness is to switch to green fuels that do not emit any emissions. Very nice, but most options are still quite expensive (and not even really green). And since the production of green products and fuel also entails CO2 emissions, those prices also go up.
So if the European Union goes along with this lousy policy proposal, we as consumers will soon have the choice between two options: ‘very expensive’, and; ‘very very expensive’. And that decision will soon be taken at a time when everything has already become very much more expensive (think of the oil price and the price of CO2 emission rights).
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We should also ask ourselves whether this policy makes sense at all, since they have started to build a lot of coal-fired power stations in Asia. And these kinds of idiotic measures also hardly contribute to the promotion of green technologies, because we are going to impose a considerable tax on our own factories. In fact, with these plans the EU gives the rest of the world a head start, because they save more money for innovation and have lower production costs compared to European producers. A lose/lose for the EU and a win/win so for Asia. Nice work Timmerfrans!
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