Merkel鈥檚 Conservatives say will work on energy taxation reform, mull price on CO2
Tagesspiegel Background / Rheinische Post / n-tv
The German conservative party CDU has said it will work on a reform of the country鈥檚 system of taxes and levies on energy to better align fiscal measures with climate action. The leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel鈥檚 governing party, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said the CDU would come up with proposals for a reform of energy taxation but stopped short of promising that a CO2聽price would be part of these reforms, Nora Zaremba writes for Tagesspiegel Background. 鈥淰ery different ideas exist within the CDU as to what a rearrangement of the system could look like,鈥� Kramp-Karrenbauer said after a party meeting on Monday.
Just a few days earlier, CDU state party leaders Thomas Strobl from Baden-W眉rttemberg and Bernd Althusmann from Lower Saxony, who the party leadership commissioned with devising a position paper on the topic, said they favoured 鈥渁 binding price recommendation for CO2鈥� but rejected an outright tax on carbon emissions, the Rheinische Post聽. The proposed pricing mechanism could instead be built on the existing EU emissions trading system (ETS). A group of conservative members of parliament seized upon the proposal and called for a decision on carbon pricing 鈥渂efore the summer break鈥� in an聽聽with news network n-tv.聽
The loss of votes at the EU elections and the parallel rise of the Green Party in Germany and across Europe has plunged the CDU into an internal dispute over the party鈥檚 future climate policy. While many in the party argue that the conservatives have to gain ground against the Greens by sharpening the CDU鈥檚 climate profile, others warn that ambitious emissions reduction measures that come with a financial burden for voters could alienate large swathes of the party鈥檚 traditional supporters.聽
