Photo: Marija JankovićSerbian companies that produce electricity and other major polluters will pay an additional tax to the state from January 1. However, the authorities have not yet passed all the necessary laws that would make this possible, and there is no provision for control of the money that the state will collect.
Companies in Serbia that produce cement, iron, steel, aluminum, artificial fertilizer, but also electricity and therefore they are classified as "big polluters" they need to start paying taxes to the state in two months, and it hasn't even adopted all the laws.
"The draft domestic climate laws were written hastily, with minimal participation of the expert public, and more as a response to foreign political pressure from Brussels than as an expression of our well-thought-out strategy," energy expert Miloš Zdravković explains to "Vreme".
Numerous documents with which these laws should be harmonized, such as the Development Strategy of the Republic of Serbia until 2030 and the National Action Plan for Climate Change (2019-2030), do not exist. This was pointed out by non-governmental organizations.
They added that it is for participation in the public debate Ministry of Finance it left only twenty days, which is the legal minimum, but it is a frequent occurrence in Serbia, with decisions that are made hastily and could be disputed.
"If the Law is adopted in the proposed form, the funds collected by collecting taxes on greenhouse gas emissions will go to the unified state budget, which the Government disposes of without the legal obligation that these funds be specifically spent on decarbonization projects," say the Belgrade Open Schools (BOŠ), the Center for Environmental Improvement (CUZS) and the Regulatory Institute for Renewable Energy and the Environment (RERI).
Instead of the collected money going into a bottomless budget hole, the state would have to return it to the economy through a dedicated fund for the modernization of energy and technology, suggests Zdravković.
"That fund would finance the replacement of outdated facilities, energy audits, switching to cleaner fuel, as well as investments in domestic innovations - in filters, biomass, geothermal sources and digital consumption control. Thus, every euro paid would be returned as an investment, not as a penalty," he adds.
The new tax on greenhouse gas emissions, no matter how it is called and how it is packaged in the vocabulary of "green transition", means only one thing for domestic producers - an increase in the cost of doing business and an additional burden.
"Four euros per ton of carbon dioxide seems harmless on paper, but in a country whose economy still relies on coal, fuel oil and outdated heating systems, that amount turns into a serious blow to competitiveness," says Miloš Zdravković. "Our cement, steel or fertilizer producer will not be able to withstand the same logic as the German or French, because they have had subsidies, green funds and non-refundable incentives for ten years, while we don't even have a serious transition plan. And so this so-called environmental tax will end up as a fiscal tax, another levy that stifles production and forces factories to turn off furnaces instead of reducing emissions."
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