This is the conclusion from the European Court of Auditors (ECA), which argues that “energy taxation can contribute to efforts to combat climate change, but current taxation levels do not reflect the degree of pollution in the EU”.

By country, with regard to explicit taxes on carbon dioxide, Portugal is the seventh in the EU that charges the most, at €23.8 per tonne of CO2, which, according to the ECA report, covers 29 percent of greenhouse gases in the transport and heating sectors.

“There are countries that are far below the value in Portugal, such as Poland, which charges €0.10 per tonne of CO2, but there are also others that are much higher, such as Sweden, which charges more than €100 per tonne of CO2”, says Viorel Ştefan, TCE member responsible for the document.

At issue is the carbon tax, in force since 2015 in Portugal (within the scope of the tax on petroleum and energy products) which was created to allow the decarbonisation of the economy and stimulate the use of less polluting energy sources.

At an EU level, the application of carbon taxes has been increasing and, currently, there are 14 Member States that directly set prices for CO2 emissions, when in 2008 there were only seven.

Even so, “taxation levels in EU Member States for energy uses, excluding fuels for road transport, are below €30 per tonne of CO2”, observes the ECA.

In a recent comparative assessment of national carbon dioxide prices in relation to different levels of environmental cost, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded that the price of €30 per tonne of CO2 is “historically low”.

For the OECD, the value of €60 tonne of CO2 already allows for “slow decarbonisation” and that of €120 tonne of CO2 is “more consistent with recent estimates of the global social costs of carbon dioxide”.

In statements to Lusa, Viorel Ştefan highlights that “a positive fact is that Portugal has higher subsidies for renewable energies than for fossil fuels”.

Even so, this is not the scenario across the EU, as according to the ECA, 15 Member States allocate more support (such as funding or tax exemptions) to fossil fuels than to renewable energies, making the green transition difficult.