{"id":168157,"date":"2025-09-26T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=168157"},"modified":"2025-09-22T14:15:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T12:15:32","slug":"the-eu-increases-disproportionate-taxation-instead-of-promoting-circularity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/the-eu-increases-disproportionate-taxation-instead-of-promoting-circularity\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU increases disproportionate taxation instead of promoting circularity:"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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We call on the European Commission and Member States to keep the 0.80 cent\/kg and to\u00a0earmark the proceeds from the \u201cPlastics Own resources\u201d, commonly referred to as the\u00a0EU\u00a0plastic tax,\u00a0into a Dedicated Fund aimed at building a more circular economy for plastics.\u00a0Furthermore, the European Commission should present an impact assessment of the effects of\u00a0the levy, considering the competitiveness issues of the plastics manufacturing value\u00a0chain.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, the\u00a0European Commission\u00a0shared a\u00a0proposal\u00a0with the Council aimed at increasing\u00a0its\u00a0so-called Own Resources. The measure foresees indirect taxation for companies with a turnover\u00a0exceeding \u20ac100 million, through the Corporate Resources for Europe initiative, as well as the creation or\u00a0extension of environmental-based indirect taxes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More importantly, the Commission\u2019s proposal\u00a0anticipates an increase in\u00a0the levy on the Member States from 0.8 \u20ac\/kg to 1\u20ac\/kg (+25%) per\u00a0kilogram of non-recycled plastic packaging waste. In 2023, the levy borne by the Member States\u00a0generated a revenue from the plastic-based own resource of \u20ac7.2 billion.\u00a0The levy was introduced\u00a0to help partially offset the gap in the EU budget created by Brexit. As a result, so far only one Member\u00a0State (Spain) has imposed on its companies a plastic tax of 0,45 \u20ac\/kg on non-reusable packaging,\u00a0calculated on the weight of non\u2011recycled plastic in the packaging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, based on the results\u00a0highlighted in the 2024 report issued by the European Court of Auditors, \u201cEU revenue based on non-recycled plastic packaging waste\u201d, Member States are not adequately prepared to implement the Own\u00a0Resource mechanism linked to non-recycled plastic packaging waste. Increasing the fee at this stage\u00a0may not lead to environmental improvements, but rather discourage investments in the necessary\u00a0infrastructures and prompt Member States to seek alternative financing solutions that do not necessarily\u00a0support waste reduction efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plastics levy is intended to encourage progress towards\u00a0sustainability in Europe, but its contribution depends on effective implementation and on how potential\u00a0impacts on competitiveness, material substitution, and enforcement are addressed in order to avoid\u00a0fraud on products, raw materials, and recyclates imported into the EU. \u200bThus, the levy should not be\u00a0treated as a convenient revenue stream for alternative priorities of the Commission but as a dedicated\u00a0tool to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable and resource-efficient Europe. A dedicated fund\u00a0should be established to support the European plastics circularity transition, financed by the levy. Such\u00a0an initiative would encourage industry players to invest in sustainable solutions within Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\u00a0highlighted in several communications to the European Commission, the\u00a0European Plastics Industry,\u00a0like other manufacturing industries,\u00a0is\u00a0facing severe\u00a0structural competitiveness issues\u00a0due to high\u00a0energy prices, labour, and environmental compliance costs in comparison to manufacturers operating in\u00a0Third Countries, leading to a very severe phase of de-industrialisation across the entire Union. The\u00a0financial difficulties are resulting in an increasing number of closures of plastics resin manufacturing,\u00a0plastics recycling, and converting plants. On top of existing challenges,\u00a0the uncertain trade framework\u00a0makes it imperative for the EU to safeguard the competitiveness of critical industrial sectors\u00a0such as plastics and to avoid introducing further burdens that compromise their economic\u00a0viability and circular transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plastics value chain is focusing its efforts towards the\u00a0circular transition,\u00a0supported by pivotal pieces of legislation such as the Packaging and Packaging\u00a0Waste Regulation (PPWR), which stipulates mandatory recycled content quotas of between 10% and\u00a035% for all plastic packaging from 2030 onwards. In addition, all packaging must be recyclable. In this\u00a0context, the EU levy and national taxes no longer have a positive steering effect, especially since\u00a0the revenues feed into the general (EU or Member State) budget and are not used to foster the\u00a0circular economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other pivotal pieces of legislation, such as the End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV) Regulation,\u00a0the Waste Framework Directive (WFD), and the Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation\u00a0(ESPR), all convey a strong message: The plastics industry needs to transition towards circularity, and\u00a0this transition needs coordinated, long-term financing assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We therefore call on the European\u00a0Commission to keep the 0.80 cent\/kg in the Own Resource package and to earmark the\u00a0reinvestment of proceeds from the \u201cPlastics Own Resources\u201d, commonly referred to as the EU\u00a0plastic tax, into a Dedicated Fund aimed at building a more circular economy for plastics,\u00a0especially for those aspects aimed at ensuring not only effective collection and sorting practices, but also\u00a0fostering the real integration of plastic recyclates in products. In order to ensure the proper application of\u00a0the fiscal measures and to guarantee that the levy is effectively aimed at fostering circularity in the\u00a0plastics sector, the European Commission should present an impact assessment of the effects of the\u00a0levy and reconsider the appropriateness of the highlighted measures in the Own Resource package,\u00a0also taking into account the requirements enforced by the PPWR.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We call on the European Commission and Member States to keep the 0.80 cent\/kg and to\u00a0earmark the proceeds from the \u201cPlastics Own resources\u201d, commonly referred to as the\u00a0EU\u00a0plastic tax,\u00a0into a Dedicated Fund aimed at building a more circular economy for plastics.\u00a0Furthermore, the European Commission should present an impact assessment of the effects of\u00a0the levy, considering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":168190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"A call for maintaining the current Plastics Own Resource at 0.80 euro\/kg and earmarking the revenues to fund plastics circularity","footnotes":""},"categories":[17143],"tags":[10416,7105,23180,11966,22835,10453],"supplier":[2317,7683,5932,26553,5933],"class_list":["post-168157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recycling","tag-circulareconomy","tag-packaging","tag-packagingwaste","tag-plastics","tag-recyclates","tag-recycling","supplier-european-commission","supplier-european-court-of-auditors","supplier-european-plastics-converters-association","supplier-petcore-europe","supplier-plasticseurope"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168157"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=168157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}