The Coalition of the Swilling

If this flies (heh!), the European economy will likely tank. Or at least seriously decline.

But I have to wonder how this will affect flights to and from CENTCOM (Kuwait, Iraq, etc) -- those are largely charter. And all of them land somewhere in Europe coming and going.

It seems it only applies to commercial flights within Europe, at the moment.

Perhaps. And certanly only for the moment. But there's a tax on jet fuel mentioned in the article. That's gotta be big as well. It's what the Luddites do, y'know.

You will probably see airports just outside the EU expand greatly, such as those in Switzerland as airlines and passengers work around the taxes. You will probably even see hubs move.

There is another tax that the French are collecting that adds more Euros to the price of a ticket. That tax is to help the third world. Goodbye Paris as a major hub. Not for anything but intra-Europe flights were already insanely expensive compared to flying to the US from there. In a strange twist of fate, there is probably a good chance that this new tax will actually increase CO2 emmissions as planes attempt to fly around the regulations. (Say London-Geneva-Berlin, etc.)

Hey Fred. I think you're right.

I wonder if they'll tax toilet useage next..."Messr., you were in European airspace when you flushed, so there's a 3 Euro Pee Fee assessed..."

I wondered about that as well, Fred. But it would be tricky, to say the least, since aircraft landing in Switzerland would need permission to fly through EU space. The Euroweenies might get hissy about that. Might be some sort of tariff war as a result.

And there aren't many choices for new hubs. From this EU map, Norway, Luxemborg, Switzerland, and the Baltic states are the only options. Could be touchy, realigning the air routes like that. Not to mention building up the transportation infrastructure to support those new hubs.

But certainly possible. We'll have to wait and see.

Sounds like Turkey might clean up, if they exit the EU. This might accelerate the break-up of the EU for poorer countries that depend on tourism.

This smells like the cigarette settlement to me - the states cleaned up based on what they claimed were the damages caused by smoking. That argument was crap from the beginning, if you consider that due to early death, even with costs for palliative cancer care, smoking actually lowers healthcare costs in the long run - you die of cancer at 55, you don't get arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, glaucoma, and erectile dysfuntion in your 60s, all of which cost money to treat, and last for a long time, relative to terminal cancer. Leaving all that aside, most of that settlement money got poured into the general revenue fund. Made a horse's ass out of the healthcare budget argument.

Same goes here - how much of that tax revenue is actually going to go for pollution control? None of it, I'll wager.

Absolutely none, John. I agree completely.

3 Euro Pee Fee assessed...

On Air France, wouldn't that be a "oui-oui" fee?

Hahahahaha!!! The EU is a schizophrenic cannibalistic bureaucracy, eating its own limbs.

"But the scheme is likely to be limited to flights within Europe in the early years to avoid legal challenges from the United States and other countries."

I bet. Legal challenges like "In a pig's eye, you crazy bastards! Try and collect!"