Evolution Of Environmental Tax Revenues In Post-Communist European Member Countries

Human activities can have harmful effects on the environment, which may affect the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Therefore, policymakers must decide which economic instruments should implement in order to achieve the sustainable development objectives. In Europe, effective action demands the collaboration of all economic agents on all member states to bring environmental taxation in line with the EU's climate change targets: reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% in 2020 compared to 1990, raising the share of EU energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20%, and 20% improvement in the EU's energy efficiency. After two decades of post-revolution economic problems and living-standards, some countries from Central and Eastern Europe took the first steps in designing extensive environmental fiscal reforms. The reform implemented in more advanced post-communist countries spread pretty quickly to upper-middle-income and middle-income countries. Through this article, I intended to present an in-depth analysis of energy taxation and an assessment of trends and status of the environmental tax revenues as a share of GDP levied by post-communist E.U. member countries: Bulgaria, The Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia by processing the information provided by Eurostat database. Each information is updated and accurate as possible, although that the use of economic instruments for environmental policy is rapidly changing. This article, which is only a work in progress, will conduct further research on a wide range of environmental tax issues. Potential projects will be submitted in publications, article, and conferences. They will include: main drivers for the evolution of environmental tax revenue such as: final energy consumption, energy efficiency policies, renewable energy, Europe Brent Oil Spot price; the situation of excise duties applied to the most important sources of energy in relation to the minimum energy tax provided by EU legislation in CEEC-10; assessments of the extent to which governments from EU-27 and CEEC- 10 are using environmental taxes; and entropic degradation - a consequences of economic growth.