TAXES on products considered polluting are struggling to gain ground in the EU despite backing from Brussels, in the face of strong opposition from movements like France’s “Yellow Vests”.

In 2011 the European Commission envisaged that by next year “a major shift from taxation of labour towards environmental taxation . . . will lead to a substantial increase in the share of environmental taxes in public revenues”.

So far this has not come to pass. Since then the share of environmental tax revenues in the EU, which stood at 6.18 per cent, has fallen almost every year.

Nonetheless, eco-taxes in 2017 generated around €369 billion (some $303 billion).

Latvia leads the bloc in implementing eco-taxes, making up some 11.11 per cent of its fiscal revenue in 2017, according to data from EU statistics authority Eurostat.

Slovenia and Greece also top the list, generating respectively 10.13 per cent and 9.5 per cent of their revenue from eco-taxes, well above the EU country average of 5.97 per cent.

By contrast, Luxembourg brings in the least revenue from eco-taxes with 4.25 per cent, while Germany (4.46 per cent), Belgium (4.74 per cent), France (4.77 per cent) and Sweden (4.8 per cent) do not fare much better.