SPAIN’S prime minister Pedro Sanchez has outlined plans to tax private jets in a move backed by environmental activists.
Speaking at the United Nations COP30 climate conference in Belem, Brazil, Sanchez told delegates: “We are working together with other countries to tax premium-class flights and private jets.”
He added: “It is only fair that those who have more – and pollute more – pay their fair share.”
The comments follow reports in June that Spain was working with a group of countries including France, Kenya and Barbados to thrash out a plan on how to tax premium and private trips by plane.
Greenpeace activists called the move ‘an important step towards ensuring that the binge users of this undertaxed sector are made to pay their fair share’.
A declaration outlining the exact way levies will be increased is expected during the current COP30 conference – with a portion of the proceeds set to be allocated to help the most climate-vulnerable nations.
During his speech, Sanchez said climate change had already claimed more than 20,000 lives in Spain over the past five years, including heat-related deaths and natural disasters such as last year’s catastrophic floods in Valencia, which killed 229 people.
The socialist prime minister said that climate change ‘not only kills, but impoverishes’, causing €44 billion of losses across the EU in the past three years.
Speaking alongside Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, Sanchez reassured delegates that his government is a reliable ally in the fight against climate change, saying: “To those who believe in science: you can count on Spain.”
“There is no way to convince someone who has put a blindfold on. Today I address those who do not back down, intimidated by negationist forces,” he added.
He also pointed to Spain’s impressive economic performance as evidence that growth could still be achieved while reducing emissions.
Spain is currently the fastest growing major Eurozone economy.
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