Sustainability-oriented Future EU Funding : A Fuel Tax Surcharge

The paper analyses the potential of a surcharge on national fuel taxes as sustainability-oriented own resource to finance the EU budget. Our estimations show that such a surcharge could yield substantial revenues, ranging between € 12.93 billion (for a surcharge of 0.03 €) and 86.2 billion (for a surcharge of 0.2 €) per year. Besides the contribution an EU fuel tax would make to various sustainability-related EU goals and strategies, it would help to address two specific problems inherent in the current EU system of fuel taxation. An EU fuel tax designed as a surcharge on national fuel taxes would decrease the existing tax bias in favour of diesel, as the surcharge would be levied uniformly on gasoline and diesel, which in most EU Member States is taxed at lower rates, alike. Moreover, by increasing national fuel tax rates, the surcharge would – depending on its level – mitigate or even remove the “under-taxation” of fuel in relation to the minimum fuel tax rates stipulated in the EU Energy Tax Directive in a number of Member States, which is caused by the absence of regular inflation adjustment of nominal fuel tax rates.