Let’s pay more for diesel

Spain will receive 23.9 billion euros from Europe in the fifth section of European fund aid. It would be greater if they had unlocked each and every one of the requirements that Brussels has imposed on Spain. As if it were a video game, each milestone achieved had its reward in money.

And uploading diesel taxes was one of those unnegotiable issues.

1.1 billion euros. That is the money that Spain will stop receiving a package awarded from 23.9 billion euros which is part of the fifth section of aid provided by the European Union within the framework of the Next Generation funds.

To receive the funds, Europe forced various reforms. Two of them have not been fulfilled. The first is the one that has to do with the interim who Europe wants to become fixed workers but that do not swell the official’s lists. The second was a tax reform that contemplated a rise in diesel taxes. Failure to comply with both reforms has left Spain without 1,100 million euros.

What do we pay? Europe has been pressing time for the price of diesel to equal to gasoline. At least in its tax section. That means that Spain should eliminate the subsidy that this fuel has in the section of the Special Hydrocarbons Tax. Right now, the figures are as follows:

• 98: 431.92 euros/1000 liters or 0.432 euros/liter gasoline.
• No lead gasoline 95: 400.69 euros/1000 liters or 0.401 euros/liter
• Diesel: 307 euros/1000 liters or 0.307 euros/liter.

To this stretch of the tax we must add the autonomic that, since 2019, is linear in 7.02 cents/liters. This leaves us a special hydrocarbons tax of:

• 98: 0.504 euros/liter gasoline.
• 95: 0.473 euros/liter gasoline
• Diesel: 0.379 euros/liter.

To these figures you also have to add VAT. As this is 21%, the impact will be greater the more expensive the fuel is. That is, in a liter of gasoline more money is collected in VAT than in one of diesel. According to the latest European bulletinin Spain we pay on average the liter of diesel to 1,425 euros/liter. No taxes would be 0.799 euros/liter. That is, 56% of what we pay in a liter of diesel are taxes.

Match diesel. Despite this, the great objective of Brussels is to match diesel and gasoline taxes. This fuel is marked from Europe because its pollutant emissions They are more harmful for human beings than those of gasoline and therefore promote measures to reduce their use or get them out of the center of cities.

To reduce their use and pressure drivers to look for cleaner alternatives, since Europe they have insisted on equalizing taxes. This would raise the price of diesel in almost 10 cents/liter, ending its competitive advantage in gas stations.

I do not do it. Obviously, uploading the price of diesel has an obvious political cost for society. In April, Europe gave an ultimatum to Spain. He had to reach an agreement to raise the diesel or the funds would be frozen. The threat resonated more strongly after November 2024 It would slide from the government that had already reached an agreement to rise to 11 cents the liter of diesel (match the special hydrocarbons tax and the relevant percentage update with VAT).

That agreed tax reform He never materialized. It was a failure that arrived three years later from another announced up in 2021 That, as it can be intuit, ever occurred. But that was after the Coronavirus crisis and before the Ukraine War. The conflict gave a last truce.

But even before, in 2018, Mariano Rajoy’s government He also torted the possibility to raise diesel taxes. In the end, that reform that was going to affect diesel resulted in a widespread rise of all fuels. The European pressure resulted in the harmonization of the rise autonomic section that It is applied since 2019. Those 7.02 cents/liter of those we have already spoken.

18 million cars. The resistance to implement these measures is not accidental. According to the Latest data collected by ANFACthe Spanish mobile park is made up of 31.3 million vehicles that remain active. Of these, 58.9% are cars moved by diesel fuel.

That is, three out of five vehicles, more than 18 million cars still use diesel to move daily. It is the result of a few years 2000 where diesel came to accumulate a market share that seemed irreplacement. In 2007 1.6 million cars were sold in Spain. Of them, 1.14 million were diesel -moved cars.

Photo | Daniyar Orazov and Xataka

In Xataka | We thought that gasoline cars were much cleaner than diesel. We did not have the effect of the sun