Making Taxes Work for the Environment

organized the International Meeting of Athens on Environmental Fiscal Reform. Speakers and respondents included distinguished specialists and politicians of various affiliations, who spoke in surprising unison in favour of a new development approach respecting humanity and the environment. Broad agreement was reached that environmental fiscal reform is among the most powerful tools, in our arsenal of economic and financial instruments, particularly effective in changing consumption and production patterns in the direction of sustainability. Early in 2001 ELLINIKI ETAIRIA called together a Working Group to approach this important subject, realizing that even the best of efforts to save the environment are ineffective, in the face of contrary signals from the market. A few months later, we were called to join a similar Group organized by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) which led to the launch of a pan-European campaign for Environmental Fiscal Reform (EFR) in November of the same year. ELLINIKI ETAIRIA plays a leading role in this effort through the chairman of our Working Group on Environmental Fiscal Reform, Yannis Paleocrassas, who coordinated the Meeting in Athens on November 7th and 8th 2002, of which this publication serves as the record.