Campaign groups have launched an independent body to promote a shift in taxation away from labour and towards environmental detrimental activities including energy and resource consumption.
Known as Green Budget Europe (GBE), it will be headed by James Nix, a former director of Irish NGO An Taisce.
Founding members include the European Environmental Bureau, Transport and Environment, the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, and Hungary’s Clean Air Action Group.
The organisation will set out to align public spending with sustainability goals, particularly focusing on the abolishment of environmentally harmful subsidies.
“A strategy to shift taxes away from labour towards pollution and resource consumption is essential,” according to Nix, who believes it will “boost innovation, create jobs and help Europe prosper” in a period of “multiple economic, fiscal and environmental crises”.
GBE will involve academics, researchers, policy-makers and politicians, as well as representatives from civil society organisation and businesses in knowledge-exchange and information-sharing.