Airplane privileges, train handicaps

Traveling by train remains more expensive than the plane for European trips. Therefore, For the second time, Greenpeace compared some 142 links in 31 European countries. Meanwhile, The results show that in 54% of cases, the train is more expensive. Furthermore, With a bias in addition. Nevertheless, The good results of the train focus on some regions located in central. Meanwhile, eastern Europe, such as Baltic countries or Poland. Similarly, Switzerland, due to its central geographical location, is average. Therefore, But, notes Greenpeace, the Geneva station of Cornavin is poorly connected and offers no night train. Finally, Spain is a bad student: the Barcelona-London flight costs twenty-six times more by train!

A gap due to low cost companies like Easyjet (very established in Geneva Cointrin) or Ryanair. These air traffic actresses maintain very low costs. in particular by carrying out social dumping – airplane privileges, train handicaps pilots are considered as self -employed independent, like the Uber system -, fiscal – they dominate in tax havens like Malta or Ireland -, and union – everything is done to block the work of staff associations.

And, above all, they benefit from a whole series of occult subsidies. If only by escaping VAT or kerosene taxes for international flights. Unlike the train. which is taxed on added value, on energy and subject to tolls for the use of the rail network.

An absurdity: flights emit an average of five times more CO2 per passenger-kilometer than trains. And the climate impact of the plane can be up to 80 times higher than the rail. The benefits garnered by airlines are made to the detriment of the environment and the social. The study authors therefore argue for an inversion of trends.

To identify the funds necessary for this, Greenpeace considers necessary airplane privileges, train handicaps to tax aviation. And in particular theft in case class, which would avoid penalizing small income which already struggles to visit their families. A super-rich tax is also mentioned. Indeed, 1% of the world’s population, the multimillionaires, is responsible for more pollution than 66% of the inhabitants of the earth.

Such a tax would be doubly virtuous: it would generate necessary funds. with a redistributor function, while playing a regulatory role. Virtuous environmental but utopian? Maybe, but so necessary. And this double function is precisely that of the basic philosophy of the tax. We tend to forget it in these times of less state.