Past Events

Never let a good crisis go to waste: Windows of opportunity for Environmental Fiscal Reform within the European Semester

28th January 2015
Past Events

European Commission DG Environment, Brussels

Organised by Green Budget Europe and hosted by the European Commission, this side-event to the Greening the European Semester expert group brought together 33 representatives of 11 EU-Member States, NGOs and the European Commission to exchange knowledge about the potential of environmental fiscal reform in very open, in-depth and fruitful discussions.

The event started off with an introduction by Paul Ekins, director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources and President of the scientific advisory committee of GBE. He presented the rationale behind environmental fiscal reform, its potentials and the experiences of Member States that already introduced green taxes. He then gave an in-depth analysis of the hurdles for effective communication of EFR, a topic that would also be addressed in the later discussions.

The second round of the day explored the best entry points for EFR in the various Member States, main barriers to reform and how these can be overcome, design features that could improve acceptance, key inputs for further action and the possible role for the European Commission in this regard, and finally the important question on how to best communicate EFR to the wider public.

If you are interested in the results of these discussions, please click here to read a summary of the discussions.