Campaigners needed! ECI to start taxing kerosene in Europe & subsidise green mobility

Thank you for sharing this idea on our platform.

If you have already asked the European Commission to register your Initiative and you are looking for advice, particularly on campaigning and fundraising, check out the SEEK ADVICE section of the Forum in order to receive tailor-made feedback on your proposed initiative.  (https://collab.ec.europa.eu/wiki/eci/display/ECI/Seek+advice).

You might also be interested in the next webinar on the ECI Forum on the new ECI regulation which will take place on 17 May 2019 at 12:30 CET. You can register to the webinar via the following link: https://portal.voiceboxer.com/events/nbvjat/register

This could be an opportunity for you to get more information on the European Citizens’ Initiative, share your ideas in front of an audience or find partners.

The Forum Moderation Team

It is an interesting proposal but raises many questions. A good approach can be to use environmental taxes to incorporate the external effects of those activities. Some countries already have that kind of taxes for flights, but environmental taxes should be applied to all transportation mean (well, in general economic activity) with a quantity proportional to the whole environmental impact (and not just emissions). One good question is to what extent those taxes can be calculated and applied without other side effects (considering the experience with regulatory bodies in the telecom market, I have serious doubts). That money can be used to promote innovative projects of long-range sustainable mobility associated to different transportation means. That way we align the incentives of companies with environmental objectives keeping the possibility of achieving more efficient flights in terms of emissions. Another perspective is equal socioeconomical access to fast means of transportation. If those environmental taxes are too high and the fastest transportation means are the less sustainable, maybe we are putting economic barriers to equal transportation. Nowadays, some trips between different countries of Europe can be done in 2 hours in plane, and one-and-a half day in train/boat. Reducing that time to something similar to what you currently have with planes can takes a lot of years and huge investments, so it is necessary to go down to the numbers to assess how feasible it is.