VILNIUS - European Budget Commissioner Dalia Grybauskaite, a native Lithuanian, has expressed her opposition to a proposal to raise the excise duty on diesel fuel as a means to combat so-called "tank tourism."
The EU's commissioner for taxes, Laszlo Kovacs, has proposed raising the excise by 20 percent from 2012 in order to cut harmful automotive emissions and curtail truckers' practice of filling up tanks at the cheapest location in the EU.
"Under current conditions, the new excise duties on diesel would have a similar effect as pouring diesel into a fire. That would inevitably give a new boost to fuel prices, which already are cause for justified concern and a real threat to economic development," Grybauskaite told the Baltic News Service.
A European Commission report found that large gasoline tanks allow truckers to fill up where diesel is cheapest and avoid buying fuel in more expensive countries. Germany, for instance, lost some 1.9 billion euros in 2004 as truckers opted to fill up their tanks in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Differences in diesel prices are as high as 20 percent, the study found, and since fuel prices comprise approximately one-fourth of a truckers' costs, truckers' will naturally go where the diesel is cheapest.
The proposal for a hike in the diesel excise has been made via a so-called "written procedure" that minimized debate on the measure and thereby expedites the commis-sion's decision-making process. Grybauskaite said she would block this procedure and demand an expert evaluation on the excise hike.
"Taxes, particularly those related to energy resources, and in this case fuel, may have a decisive impact on the entire economy, rather than on an individual sector," she said.
She said that the proposed excise hike was a political issue rather than a technical one because it would affect 21 EU member states. Nine countries, including the three Baltic states, have transitional arrangements. Lithuania, for instance, has pledged to raise its excise duty to the minimum level of 330 euros by 2013.
Currently only the minimum level of excise duty has been harmonized across the EU at 302 euros per 1,000 liters. Starting in 2010, this will be raised to 330, Reuters reported this week.
However, actual rates vary from 220 to 294 in countries with transitional arrangements, to 300 to 400 in 13 states, more than 400 in four states, and as high as 693 euros in Britain, according to the EC report.
The commission will reportedly propose that the minimum diesel excise be raised to 359 euros per 1,000 liters in 2012 's up 19 percent from current levels 's and to 380 euros in 2014.
Grybauskaite said a new excise hike as early as 2012 would have an adverse effect on the countries that have concluded such transitional arrangements.
"The pressure would be particularly strong on those countries that are making preparations to join the eurozone. Undoubtedly, fuel prices would push up general price levels and lead to growing inflation," the commissioner said.
