EWhat if Europe’s tax charade that excludes fossil fuels continues until 2035? Here is a possible scenario: This Thursday, November 13, when COP30 is held in Belém (Brazil), the finance ministers of the European Union (EU) member states will meet in Brussels to decide on the future direction of energy taxation. This text, adopted in 2003, allows tax exemptions for fossil fuels in the aviation and maritime sectors. The stakes are huge: if no revisions are passed, these tax benefits, which represent a real red carpet for fossil fuels, could last for the next ten years. The sizable gap between political decisions and the ecological ambitions demonstrated by the EU will only widen, and once again leave entire societies having to face the consequences of climate change that are increasingly exacerbated by climate change.
Protecting economic competitiveness based on carbon energy, a favorite argument of critics of fairer taxation, no longer has legitimacy in a world where the climate is increasingly out of control. Europe, like the rest of the world, is already being suffocated by heat waves and at the same time they are drowning in floods. In the Philippines, super typhoon Fung-Wong hit just three days after Kalmaegi. The increasing frequency of this phenomenon reminds us of the importance of making decisions that are in line with science. The consequences of the political rejection of science – both humanitarian, social and economic – will far exceed the impacts of implementing ecological policies.
The disconnect between ambition and decision is also present across France. Even as the President of the Republic multiplied his ambitious speech at COP30 and called on participants to vote “science versus ideology”the air sector still escapes energy taxes: the country faces a shortfall of several billion euros every year. In comparison, the 10 million euro annual subsidy required to maintain night trains from Paris to Vienna and Berlin seems insignificant.
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