Fuel price anger unlikely to help Europe's Greens
© 2000 Reuters Limited
September 12, 2000
Story by Emma Thomasson
BERLIN - The pain felt by European motorists over soaring fuel prices might vindicate Green calls for the world to free itself from the bondage of fossil fuels.
But while consumers are still fuming at higher petrol prices, calls by European ecologist parties for taxes on fuel to discourage demand and boost energy efficiency are unlikely to bolster the Greens' already waning political fortunes.
"The Greens' core supporters are already behind ecological taxes, but the policy will certainly not win them any new friends," Manfred Guellner, an analyst from Germany's Forsa polling institute, told Reuters.
"They caught the spirit of the age at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, but their time is over."
The Greens, in government in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Finland, need not worry about losing support from ageing hippies and schoolteachers over high petrol prices, caused by crude oil at $35 a barrel and high tax burdens.
But their larger Socialist and Social Democrat allies have more to fear from protests by angry truckers, and from motorists who may exact revenge at the ballot box.
France's Green environment minister, Dominique Voynet, has railed against concessions by Socialist premier Lionel Jospin to truckers and farmers who blocked fuel supplies for a week.
The Greens said the plan was short-sighted and repeated their demands to shift more freight from the roads to the railways. But their calls have fallen on deaf ears.
Voynet, one of two Green ministers in the Socialist-led left-wing cabinet, was not consulted on fuel tax cuts aimed at ending the blockades, despite threatening unspecified action if the concessions continued.
GERMAN GREENS VINDICATED?
Germany's Greens, junior coalition partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's centre-left government, say high oil prices justify their call for more support for renewable energy and energy efficiency programmes.
"The end of the age of oil is in sight," said Greens science spokesman Hans-Josef Fell. "Persistently high oil prices are the result of the world's oil starting to run out.
"A reduction of oil or ecology taxes would be completely the wrong signal, because it would mean that in the short term the incentive to save and convert would fall away."
The Greens have stuck to their guns on the controversial "ecology taxes" they pushed through on fuel last year, even though opinion polls show they may struggle to win the five percent of the vote they need to gain re-election in 2002.
For now, the German Greens have the backing of the SPD, which has so far resisted demands to back off from plans to increase fuel taxes each year through 2002 to fund transfers to the state pensions system.
"What would that lead to? If you do open these holes, what's to stop the oil companies and OPEC states filling them again? And what do you do when prices fall? Do you raise taxes to compensate?" SPD Deputy Economics Minister Siegmar Mosdorf said.
The picture has been similar in Belgium, where Greens Transport Minister Isabelle Durant has resisted pressure from two days of truckers' protests to ease fuel levies, although she has offered to ease payment terms.
"Lowering excise duties amounts to a knee-jerk reaction," Durant, one of four Greens ministers in Belgium's rainbow coalition, has said.
CAVING IN
In Italy, where there is one Green minister in a multi-party left-wing coalition, the government has bowed to the transport lobby and channelled higher value added tax receipts to ease fuel prices.
Opposition Greens in the Netherlands, who have bucked the European trend by gaining support since the last general election, say surging oil prices should help focus on investing in energy efficiency.
"There is a positive side to the higher oil prices. Just look at history - it's not because of an environmental policy that we have cars that use less energy than 25 years ago, it is because of the higher oil prices in the 1970s," said parliamentarian Kees Vendrik of the Groenlinks party.
The party, which according to opinion polls would win about 10 percent of the vote if elections were held now, opposes proposals to cut petrol taxes.
"It would give a signal to OPEC members...that it's okay, go ahead just increase oil prices and we will compensate that for the European consumers," Vendrik said.