• Why does the EU not respect the ‘polluter pays’ principle?

    Editorial by Andras Lukacs The EU is preparing to provide aid to Hungary’s national development reference framework under the Transport Operational Programme and the Regional Operational Programmes. This money will be used mainly to fund long-distance road projects and to improve accessibility to airports.

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    Yet according to a study commissioned by the Hungarian ministry of environment (and financed by the European Commission’s Phare
    programme), state subsidies to road transport in Hungary are already enormous.

    Encouraged by this, and also by the existing EU transport white paper which talks about the need to avoid further subsidies to the most
    polluting forms of transport, we at the Clean Air Action Group wrote to the Commission secretary-general, Catherine Day. We pointed
    out that if Hungary uses the proposed EU funding to pay for road and airport projects, it would contravene the EU acquis, and would
    certainly violate EU legislation concerning the internal market, the environment (especially the polluter pays principle as laid down in the
    Treaty of the European Union) and anti-fraud policy. We therefore called on her not to approve any financing for this purpose, but to
    propose to the Hungarian government to plan a regrouping of the financing to other areas to ensure conformity with EU legislation.

    We have now received a reply to our letter from an official in the transport directorate, DG-Tren. It says: “The Commission believes that
    the creation and completion of transport infrastructure is necessary for a fully functioning internal market that in turn will lead to growth
    and jobs. … While rail is an attractive option, there is a case to be made to optimise the contribution that roads can make.”

    Whether deliberately or not, the official did not address the concern the Clean Air Action Group was raising. We did not ask at all whether
    road construction is necessary or not. We only said that the EU legislation requires that if such roads are needed, their construction should
    not be financed by the taxpayers of EU countries, but by the road users themselves. There are abundant possibilities for this in Hungary.
    For example a fee-per kilometre could be introduced for lorries like in Switzerland (today heavy trucks cause enormous damages to roads
    and the environment, for which their operators do not pay at all).

    The Hungarian government might also stop tolerating the nationwide tax evasion carried out by illegal accounting of the private use of
    cars as company use. This causes a loss of state revenue each year equivalent to about 3% of GDP.

    • Andras Lukacs is president of the Clean Air Action Group, a T&E member

    This news story is taken from the March 2007 edition of T&E Bulletin.