The road to a decarbonized European Traffic sector should not include public subsidies to airports

EU-kommissionen har sendt et forslag om fortsat mulighed for offentlig støtte til lufthavene i høring. RBT har svaret følgende:

To reach the climate goals set by the European Commission and by the Paris Climate Treaty all support to the air industry shall be reduces and finally be banned. All efforts to reduce the volume of air transport shall be taken and a transition to climate friendly means of transport shall be promoted.

Today the air sector is benefitting from no VAT and an extremely low fuel taxes. The very low infrastructure costs are hiding a substantial public support to many smaller and middle sized airports.

Compared to this the climate friendly railway industry is paying everything (VAT, fuel taxes, infrastructure tolls), which is a heavy burden to the non-subsidized long distance routes. Where railways are competing with air traffic the air industry is offered large public direct and indirect support. Counting only on privileges on VAT and fuel, every passenger in the air is supported by 61 Euro per trip compared with the same passenger on the train. On top of this goes the unacceptable support to the airports.

If airlines should pay a fuel tax reflecting the burden to the climate, the CO2 emissions should even be multiplied with 2 or 3 to get the real negative influence to the climate.

Council for Sustainable Transport (Denmark)

The Council for Sustainable Transport is an association and also an NGO working for better conditions for the sustainable road users – and a reduction in car use. We raise our voices in the traffic policy debate, organizes public meetings and regularly performs a variety of responses with a focus on public transport, transport policy, infrastructure, transport, climate and environmental dimension, etc.