Prague - The Czech Environment Ministry would like to introduce a special fee for business flights by all government members and officials, the same as their counterparts in Germany, the UK and Sweden are liable for.
The charge would practically mean a tax on carbon dioxide emissions as, of all the means of transportation; the airplanes are responsible for the highest pollution.
The money collected from the so-called "carbon offsetting" would go to a special account and would be used to lower emissions of the "greenhouse gases" in developing countries or to subsidise projects aimed at lowering the effects of climate changes in the poorer parts of the world.
The ministry, lead by the Green Party's Martin Bursík, is working on the specifics of this proposal; the government is to get in the draft bill during the first calendar quarter of this year, in order to have the environmental tax in force by the beginning of the next year at the very latest.
"After the preliminary calculations we think there would be a CZK 80 (£2) surcharge by ticket," the ministry spokesman Jakub Kašpar told Aktuálně.cz.
The Environment Ministry thinks the new charge will make the colleagues in the government think twice before they book a flight, and make them chose alternatives to flying for shorter trips abroad.
Germans paid for the others
Last autumn, Sweden announced the introduction of the special duty on the government ministers' foreign flights. "We set up a special chapter in the 2008 Budget," Swedish government said in a statement. The money collected will be used for the environmental projects abroad.
"We'll use these funds to introduce environment saving technologies in the developing countries, thus cutting carbon dioxide emissions," the Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren said. Emission tax for the ministers flying abroad is current practice in Germany as well.
"Germany, when organizing an informal environment meeting of the EU Council during its EU presidency, paid this tax for all those attending the talks," the Czech ministry spokesman Jakub Kašpar pointed out.
How much cash will be collected? No estimate so far
The Czech Environment Ministry officials are unable to say how much money the ministerial flights would bring into the new special account. Both ministers and their officials are using air travel on hundreds of trips abroad.
According to the Defence Ministry information, the Prime Minister alone used the government aircraft for almost eighty trips during the last two years; both defence minister and the minister of foreign affairs made more than sixty such trips each.
On top of that, government ministers also take regular commercial flights for instance, that's how Minister Martin Bursík himself travelled to a climate conference in Bali.
