Alberto Nunez feijoo premiered this morning in Brussels in the typical meetings that the European People’s Party holds before the European Council. There, before the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the rest of the heads of government and conservative opposition leaders, he has proposed that Brussels allow suspend in an “exceptional and temporary” way the special tax on hydrocarbons. US President Joe Biden announced the same measure on Wednesday and Feijóo believes that “Europe must react” and also allow member countries that request it to “try to lower prices and reduce inflation.”
The case of gasoline and diesel is not like that of electricity, in which the European Union does allow the establishment of reduced VAT rates (as the Executive of Pedro Sánchez has done). The cuts in the taxation of hydrocarbons are vetoed by Brussels and Feijóo wants an exception to be made to mitigate the consequences of the rise in prices “until inflation returns to reasonable terms.” If this modification were carried out, users could benefit from 0.473 euros per liter of gasoline and 0.379 euros per liter of diesel. The head of the Spanish opposition has pointed out that citizens could save “half a euro” per liter since they would add the 20 cents with which the Government now rewards each liter.
“Social Tensions”
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The president of the PP believes that such a measure would help “reduce economic and social tensions which, as he has said, “can be increased this fall”. And it would have a great impact, in his opinion, in peripheral countries such as Spain, in which freight transport by road is the “majority”.
The Galician politician briefly left the meeting to explain his speech to the press, in which he also stressed that inflation must be “enemy number one” for everyone. “We have also requested that the European Central Bank continue rescuing and helping interest rates not to increase exponentially”, he pointed out.