Brussels, 17/02/2005 (Agence Europe) - During the EU finance ministers' lunch, French and German ministers Hervé Gaymard and Hans Eichel returned to the subject of kerosene tax, which they had presented the day before at Eurogroup. Gaymard was hoping that the initiative for funding a pilot vaccination programme again the major pandemics in Africa, would benefit from a certain scepticism displayed by some Member States. This measure, which had been raised at the meeting of the G7 finance ministers' meeting in London (EUROPE 8 February p 6), was not taken up by the G7 due to the opposition of the USA. It did, however, seduce some Member States “even if some were less favourable”, indicated Mr Gaymard. Without pre-judging the US position, he did say that nothing stopped Europe from “making its own decisions” and that such a tax was not in contradiction with the British initiative for an international finance development facility. Jean-Claude Juncker gave his support for such a tax for attaining the Millennium objectives. He informed the press that he supported a kerosene tax in the knowledge that several Member States shared his point of view. According to Juncker, such a tax had “more of a chance of succeeding than a tax on capital flows, which in principle I support but whose application would be difficult". Diplomatic sources, however, said that “Greece and other countries are not convinced” and wanted additional studies carried out on the economic impact of the kerosene tax.
Development ministers at the informal meeting in Luxembourg supported an instrument of this kind as long as it was complementary to aid development by Member States and that it did not replace this (EUROPE 16 February p 7). If at this stage, the Commission ha not tackled the subject more profoundly and is proceeding to an inventory of the different forms of aid funding of development, Commission Jacques Barrot declared some reservations about it. A position of which Mr Gaymard took note.