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It must have been a distracted Tonio Borg that addressed the Nationalist Party’s General Conference 7 May. While Borg attacked the European Greens for proposing taxes on tourism, transport and the environment, a spokesperson for Environment Minister George Pullicino told MaltaToday that the government is fully committed to introducing Eco taxes.
The environment spokesperson referred this newspaper to the budget and said it is plain and clear for everyone to see that Malta intends to introduce taxes to support the environment.
Speaking about the environment in the last budget, former finance minister John Dalli said: “It will be useless, however, if we do not ourselves care for our environment by what we consume and by what we contribute to the required costs.
“A system of eco-contribution will, therefore, be launched. Part of this eco-contribution will be collected from containers of consumption products as containers make up an essential part of the waste management problem in our country.
This system, which will be gradually introduced, will be based on these principles: eco-contribution will incentivise more use of the deposit-refund schemes on containers; the amount of eco-contribution on the various types of containers would reflect the environmental impact of containers and would, therefore, depend on factors such as material and container size – hence, the incentive for use of containers with a lesser environmental impact; eco-contribution is primarily intended to discourage consumption with a non-acceptable environmental impact.”
Minister Dalli continued: “Next year, this eco-contribution will be introduced on a limited spread of containers of locally-consumed products, both produced locally as well as imported.”
He explained: “This measure will be reviewed regularly depending on the extent by which local producers/importers will shoulder their responsibilities from an environment point.
“This can happen when local operators will put systems in place by which material that is put on the market will be recovered and managed in a way that it will not leave any negative impact on the environment.”
From the budget speech it is clear that the government is planning eco-taxation on a variety of products: “The other part of eco-contribution will be on consumption products which, when thrown away, generate a negative environmental impact. Next year, this eco-contribution will be collected on batteries, tyres, electronic apparatus, non-edible oils and oil filters.”
The promised eco-contributions have not yet been introduced.
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