Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Dias Soares, Claudia --- "Critical Issues in Implementing Energy Taxation" [2006] ELECD 438; in Peeters, Marjan; Deketelaere, Kurt (eds), "EU Climate Change Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: EU Climate Change Policy

Editor(s): Peeters, Marjan; Deketelaere, Kurt

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426057

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: Critical Issues in Implementing Energy Taxation

Author(s): Dias Soares, Claudia

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

14. Critical issues in implementing energy
taxation
Claudia Dias Soares1

1. FramiNG tHE DisCUssioN
European Union (EU) energy policy has among its priorities supporting the
achievement of the targets set within the EU Climate Change Policy. on the
other hand the EU Green Paper on security of energy supply of November 2000
reflects a transition from a `dirigiste', intergovernmental and mercantilistic view
of security of supply to a more market-based one.2 thus, in order to fulfil its
environmental goals in the new regulatory context, the EU will have to fine-tune
its intervention, as this has to be a market-facilitating one rather than a market-
replacing one.
to design a `soft' and `effective' regulatory intervention, fiscal and economic
instruments are critical. therefore, the EU has been taking decisive steps to
promote energy efficiency and investment in cleaner energy with resource to
such instruments. scanning the new legal framework at this point might be
helpful to access possible unexploited opportunities and policy failures in order
to improve the system. in this chapter we will develop a critical analysis over
the present regime, pinpointing some aspects which we consider worthy of
special attention by the EU regulator.3
we will start by targeting our analysis to the constitutional and institutional
levels. apart from increased restraints posed in an enlarged EU by the unanimity
rule in tax matters, there is another mounting problem. this is the absence of
an explicit energy chapter in the EC treaty, which translates into a ...