What about the air ticket tax?
According to the EU Observer 17 May Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the finance ministers group, said:
"This will be a voluntary contribution which some member states propose to turn into a mandatory contribution, but we are leaving this open"
One may therefore doubt whether any real decision was taken at all. The decision just seems to leave everything open.
The idea of an EU-wide air ticket tax as a way to increase aid to Africa and developing countries has won some support from the French, German and Belgian governments while for instance the Irish, Greek and Finnish governments did not agree on a EU-wide tax.
No tax rate was decided, which means that the amount of aid that this voluntary tax would generate cannot be estimated.
In some EU countries, at least, it would be up to the passengers to decide whether they want to pay or not to pay the air ticket tax. Jacques Cossart of Attac France confirms that he sees this tax more as a donation than as a tax:
"With this Ecofin proposal, we have a very typical diversion of the tax process", Cossart writes in an email.
"Either the individuals or companies have the possibility to make some donation (for development or protection of butterfly) because they would be generous (why not), or there is a collective decision to collect money, from revenues, to finance what it has been decided to finance including public goods", Cossart continues.
Cossart adds that although ATTAC-France only promotes the tax process, it is not against private donations. However, private donations should not be called taxes and they can only be an additional contribution, he adds.
"My suggestion would be to indicate that our network would consider the Air-tickets donation as any donation with no connexion with necessary global taxation", Jacques Cossart finishes his email.
