In 2023, environmental tax revenue in the EU amounted to €341.5 billion compared with €334.6 billion in 2022, marking a 2.1% increase (+€6.9 billion).
Despite this increase, the share of environmental taxes in the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined from 2.4% in 2010 to 2.0% in 2023. During the same period, environmental tax revenue as a share of the total government revenue from taxes and social contributions fell from 6.3% to 5.1%.
This information comes from data on environmental taxes by economic activity published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on environmental tax statistics.
At the EU level in 2023, corporations generated most environmental tax revenues, accounting for 49.4% of the total. Most of this corporate contribution came from companies in manufacturing, construction, mining, and utilities (23.6%) and the services sector (25.8%).
At the national level, corporations contributed on average half of the total tax revenues in most EU countries, with the highest shares in Czechia (81.2%), Estonia (80.3%) and Romania (79.1%) and the lowest in Austria (33.6%), Luxembourg (34.9%) and Ireland (38.0%).
Households contributed 48.3% of the total environmental tax revenues. In 15 EU countries households paid more than 40% of the total environmental tax revenues, varying between 41.5% in Hungary and 60.3% in Ireland.
Only in a few countries did non-residents significantly contribute to the environmental tax revenues, with the highest share in Luxembourg (48.7%), well ahead of Malta (17.4%) and Austria (14.1%).
Source: Eurostat
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