Professional paper
Green Taxation in the Western Balkan Countries
Lidija Madžar
orcid.org/0000-0002-1708-5683
; Alfa BK University, Belgrade, Republic of Serbia
Abstract
Environmental taxation appeared as a reaction to the intense pollution of water, soil and air as a problem that has occupied humanity for centuries. The ultimate goal of green taxation is the protection of the environment and the prevention of environmental pollution, while its intense connection with economic growth and industrial activities of modern humanity can be observed. Green taxation is based on the Polluter-Pays Principle, which implies the requirement that the polluter must bear the costs of preventing, causing and controlling environmental pollution. The purpose of this article is to investigate the state, perspectives and problems of green taxation in the countries of the Western Balkans. While Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia have already made some significant steps towards the introduction of environmental taxation with the aim of accelerating their transition towards a green economy and faster adaptation to the announced Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), Serbia and Albania are still significantly behind them. Due to the lack of key empirical data on green taxation, the rest of the article focuses on North Macedonia and Serbia, where energy taxes play the largest role in environmental taxation, followed by transport and pollution taxes. In NorthMacedonia, a stronger negative correlation between total environmental taxes and registered pollution is observed than in Serbia, indicating that Serbia should pay more attention to these issues if it wants to converge towards EU environmental standards. In the future, the Western Balkan countries will also need to pay much more attention to keeping green statistics, as well as to their general commitment to green issues and problems.
Keywords
environmental taxation; green taxes; environmental pollution; Western Balkan countries (WBCs); Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)
Hrčak ID:
309550
URI
Publication date:
1.10.2023.
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