Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-05-Speech-3-186"
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"en.20031105.15.3-186"2
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".
Mr President, I welcome this opportunity to present my report on taxation of passenger cars and echo the concerns of Mr Heaton-Harris about the lateness of the hour and the inevitable lack of an audience here. However, I thank those of you who have stayed.
I would like to start by making it absolutely clear that this report is not about tax harmonisation. This report is about the internal market. It is about ensuring that the internal market operates fairly in terms of passenger cars and that the current obstacles which are there, in part, in the range of taxation currently levied, are evened out so that the internal market in this particular area is enabled to function much better than it does at the moment.
The other issue in this report is environmental. It is actually about CO2 emissions from passenger cars and the way in which taxation can be used to deal with this and to improve our environment.
I turn first to the internal market questions and particularly the issue of registration tax on cars which I recommend should be abolished. This report suggests that it be phased out over a long period. At the moment, the different levels of registration tax in differing Member States distort very markedly indeed the price of cars. In Finland, for instance, registration tax for new vehicles is over EUR 700, in Portugal it is over EUR 2 000 and in the UK we do not have a registration tax at all. What inevitably happens is that people who sell cars vary the prices to take account of registration tax in various Member States.
The way to deal with this and to make the internal market fairer and more of a level playing field is to do away with this tax altogether, but to do it gradually. One thing that we need to avoid is for the Member States to be out of pocket as a result of this measure. Therefore it needs careful phasing-in and it needs to ensure that it is actually tax and revenue neutral, and no country is worse off by implementing this. This can be done, but obviously it will take time. No-one is suggesting that this be introduced tomorrow, but I recommend that the process be set in train so that as far as sales on new cars are concerned, we will eventually get to the position where registration tax is phased out.
We need to look at the same issue in terms of second-hand cars and cars which go across borders. The same principles apply, although again this will need to be looked at and phased in. We are looking at doing the same kind of thing, so that the current restrictions and difficulties that people within the EU have in crossing borders with cars and needing to re-register etc., are eventually also phased out. This, of course, will aid not only the internal market, but also free movement of people and labour within the EU. On all levels it is something which we would welcome.
As far as the environmental aspect of this report is concerned, this is something which concerns me very much as a representative of London, one of the major cities in the EU, obviously contending with car pollution all the time and always looking for ways of dealing with it. Members may or may not know that there is a tax in the UK on petrol to take account of CO2 emissions
a green tax
which works very well. This can be done because it is very self-contained, it is tax on a particular product. If we did this throughout the EU it would go a long way towards reducing CO2 emissions and would be a very positive benefit to our environment.
Those are my two recommendations in this report. I believe we are doing a good thing here: it is not about tax harmonisation, it is about the internal market and our environment."@en1
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