The Netherlands, which plans to reintroduce a national tax on airline tickets from 2021, tried to stimulate an EU initiative on carbon pricing and air transport taxation at the Ecofin Council meeting on Tuesday 12 February.
“This is the idea of having maybe a European tax on aviation [...] Some countries in Europe already have it. Let's do it together!” said Dutch Secretary of State for Finance Menno Snel on his arrival at the meeting.
This was not a formal discussion, but a simple information point based on a Dutch document (see EUROPE 12190). Nevertheless, France and Sweden – which already have an aviation tax – but also Belgium, are reportedly rather open to it, while Spain has supposedly warned against the unintended consequences that such a tax could cause.
When asked at a press conference about his position, Romanian Finance Minister Eugen Orlando Teodorovici did not wish to comment.
The Commission, for its part, expressed its readiness to explore the issue. The European Commissioner for Financial Services, Valdis Dombrovskis, nevertheless recalled that, in the same vein, the previous Commission had already proposed a revision of the Energy Tax Directive, but that the Member States, at that time, had not succeeded in reaching an agreement.
The Netherlands would like the subject to be raised again at the informal ECOFIN Council meeting in April and a mapping of existing practices to be carried out in parallel. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)