What is the Benefit of Taxes on Air Traffic?

At the beginning of November, a call from nine EU countries to the new European Commission to ensure effective pricing of aviation emissions in Europe drew attention. Already earlier the Netherlands had announced the introduction of an air ticket levy from 2021 in the event of a lack of initiatives at EU level. As part of the climate package, Germany will increase the aviation tax from 2020.

In fact, the necessary greening of mobility in the EU must also include air travel, which is by far the most climate-damaging form of travel. Air traffic accounts for only 2.8 percent of worldwide CO₂ emissions, in the EU it is 3.6 percent; the overall impact on climate is about threefold. However, the number of passengers in the EU has risen by 43 percent since 2009 to 1.1 billion. In the last five years, CO₂ emissions from air traffic in Europe have grown by over 26 percent. Air travel also causes a number of other greenhouse gas emissions (further information can be found here).

The complete commentary (in German) can be found here.

The commentary was published as part of the "economic view", a cooperation between Austria's "National Economic Society" and the daily newspaper "Die Presse".