Joana Pedroso gives a quick overview of her ongoing doctoral research about environmental taxes under the EU State Aid Law and its practice perspectives. Often, environmental taxes set incentives effects to products or services, which could deliver State Aid effects forbidden by this EU law. However, this fact does not mean that domestic legislators should avoid enacting environmental taxes based on the fear of a State aid intervention. Instead, domestic legislators should become aware of how the EU State aid law and its practice can limit their tax sovereignty. Through such awareness, domestic legislators can design and enact environmental taxes domestically that potentially avoid the EU State aid intervention due to their beneficial ecological effect. In this video, Joana points out some aspects of such a complex legal system involving the EU and its Member States relevant to people particularly interested in environmental taxes.

Joana Pedroso is a doctoral student in Tax Law at the Department of Law, School of Business, Economics and Law at University of Gothenburg.