Aviation taxation and subsidies
Friends of the Earth argued that fuel tax would give incentive to improve the energy efficiency of operations, and would be a more effective response than emission trading.
This has been a very effective funding source for air traffic control without the complications and expenses of collecting on a per-flight basis.
[2] In November 2019, the Finance Ministers of Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden presented a joint statement calling on the European Commission, more specifically European Commissioner for Climate Action Frans Timmermans, to introduce EU-wide taxes on aviation so as to charge the entire aviation industry more for its emissions and pollution, and put all member states on level pegging.
[3][4] In a September–October 2019 poll conducted by the European Investment Bank (EIB) amongst 28,088 EU citizens from the then 28 member states, 72% said they would support a carbon tax on flights.
[6] Austria introduced a Flight Tax Act (Flugabgabegesetz, FlugAbgG) in April 2011[7] similar to the German aviation taxation system.
According to §5.1 of the Flight Tax Act, the flight tax depends on the distance to the destination airfield per passenger:[8] During the COVID-19 pandemic, airlines in Europe had to temporarily cease most operations and had requested a total of 12.8 billion euros in government support by mid-April 2020, according to a Transport & Environment, Greenpeace and Carbon Market Watch report.
[14] On 9 June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in France, economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire announced a financial support programme for the aerospace sector for 15 billion euros.
There were several aims, including the protection of 300,000 direct and indirect jobs (100,000 of which were said to be at risk within 6 months), a gradual recovery of the 34 billion annual trade surplus that the French aviation industry produced, and the goal of developing carbon-neutral air travel by 2035 rather than 2050 (for which the civil aviation research council CORAC would receive €1.5 billion in support over three years).
[17] Due to vehement opposition by the aviation industry and travel agencies, the tax was abolished a year later on 1 July 2009, leading to heavy criticism from academia and environmental organisations.
[18] In 2017, the Third Rutte cabinet coalition agreement planned to introduce a new aviation tax of 7 euros on every ticket, regardless of destination, on 1 January 2021.
The EU Commission in 2014 ruled that subsidies Ryanair received from a regional authority a decade ago had to be repaid (€525,000).
[28] In June 2020, Flemish Economy Minister Hilde Crevits decided that trainings for airplane and helicopter pilots would no longer be subsidised in Flanders from 1 July 2020 onwards.
