Incompetence and the possible serving of interests led to scandals and “green” taxation

 

 

Statement by AKEL MP Kostas Kosta after the meeting of the Parliamentary Energy, Trade, Industry and Tourism Committee

27 March 2024

We will reiterate yet again that currently, when people are paying for very expensive electricity and motor fuel prices, 300 million Euros last year and this year perhaps over 400 million euros for pollutant emissions, paying very high prices for essential goods, loan interest rates with ten increases without even any small reductions noted yet and general increases due to Houthi attacks, now is not the time to impose green taxation.

Today, in the Parliamentary Committee on Trade, we had an admission from the representative of the Ministry of Finance that the European Union has identified weaknesses. We are wondering whether all that is happening with pollutants, all that has happened with the failure to meet the transport target, all that has happened with the scandals with the Pentakomo Integrated Waste Management Facility (locally known by its acronym OEDA) where the European Commission gave us money, we built waste management plants but we are still burying the rubbish, are really weaknesses.

It is incompetence, sloppiness, along with the possible serving of specific interests and huge scandals, which citizens are now being asked to pay for.

Next Monday will be April Fool’s Day and it won’t be a lie that the reduced excise duty of 8.3 cents is being terminated and that a further increase of 5 cents will be added because of the so-called “green tax”.

I will remind you all once again that the Assistant Auditor General of the Republic of Cyprus, at a meeting of the Parliamentary Energy Committee in 2019, told us that “a single cent increase in fuel prices per year brings in profits to companies of 8 to 10 million Euros”.

Why should people have to pay for all this?

In this country, when will we at long last not only not have responsibilities being assumed but also have people take charge?

The European Commission identified all this and included it in the Recovery and Resilience Plan, unfortunately with the agreement – as it has been made clear today – of the previous government. Today our people are literally and figuratively footing the bill.

Today we heard about a “new green tax” on water, on hotels, aeroplanes, ships, motor fuels, on the fuels that industries need to function, on waste management and on burying rubbish. So we have heard so many new taxes that people will pay for through no fault of their own. There is honestly no tax left to put on our breath too.

We had asked the Committee as a Party a long time ago, specifically last September for the new government, to ask the European Commission to postpone this green tax.

Unfortunately, nothing happened, the deadline is March 31st and now we are basically waiting for the relevant bills for the specific increases in various taxes.

Many things should have been done and unfortunately they haven’t been done over the years either because some people were incompetent or because they served specific vested interests. It is unthinkable today for people to pay for all these scandals without being responsible for anything.

We have submitted proposals on how we can solve the problems, such as taxing the exorbitant profits of renewable energy companies, reducing VAT on electricity to 9%, holding tenders for renewable energy projects and many other proposals without, unfortunately, anything having being done to the point where today the government ruling forces has found the easy solution by imposing taxes on people.

Asked by a journalist whether the green tax will be all-European for all European countries, Costas Costa said that the European Commission imposed the relevant taxes in the Recovery and Resilience Plan because as a democracy we either did not do what we had to do or what we did we did not do properly.

In response to another question, he said that today we have not heard anything about any expected compensatory measures.