'Polluters to pay' - Watson welcomes new car tax system

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 5th Sep 2006

The European Parliament today approved a Commission proposal on passenger car taxation recommending a common EU tax base linked to CO2 emissions from cars.

28% of total CO2 emissions in the European Union are due to transport, 84% of that comes from road transport alone and 50% of that is accounted for by passenger cars. For that reason the European Parliament recommends replacement of the car registration tax with a progressive tax on pollution, thereby taxing car use instead of car ownership.

Graham Watson, the South West and Gibraltar Lib Dem MEP said:

"This is welcome backing for the use of green taxes in a way that changes our behaviour without raising overall taxation. Liberal Democrats in the UK have long supported green taxes and are well down the track of providing costed proposals.

"The European Parliament is right to back a change in car taxes to influence the cars we buy. This is about using taxes in a new way to change behaviour, not to raise money for Member States or the European Union. Green taxes have worked in the Nordic countries and they should be a model for the rest of Europe."

Moreover, Parliament voted to help EU citizens who face financial and bureaucratic hurdles when they want to move a car from one Member State to another. The average cost of registering a car in another EU Member State is 350 euros.

Graham continued:

"The current passenger car market works very badly for people who want to move to another European country. My constituents in the South West are fed up with the stressful and expensive process they must go through to get their car registered in another EU Member State. If we want to make it easy for people to move around in Europe we should get rid of this unnecessary red tape."