France, Spain among countries to agree to tax premium flyers, private jets

By David Latona and Simon Jessop

SEVILLE, Spain (Reuters) -A group of countries including France, Kenya, Spain and Barbados pledged on Monday to tax premium-class flying and private jets in a bid to raise funds for climate action and sustainable development. 

As many richer nations scale back official development aid for countries, even as extreme weather events increase in frequency and severity, some are looking to find new sources of financing, including by taxing polluting industries.

The announcement on the opening day of a U.N. development summit in Seville, Spain, was one of the first to emerge from the "Sevilla Platform for Action" that aims to deliver on the renewed global financing framework agreed ahead of the event.   

"The aim is to help improve green taxation and foster international solidarity by promoting more progressive and harmonised tax systems," the office of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a statement.

The initiative, which was co-signed by Sierra Leone, Benin, Antigua and Barbuda and Somalia, will get technical support from the European Commission, the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force said in a separate statement.

Launched in November 2023 to explore new forms of taxation that could help support developing countries' efforts to decarbonise and protect themselves against the impacts of climate change. 

As well as an aviation tax, which could raise billions of dollars, the task force said in a recent report that other sectors that could potentially be taxed more include shipping, oil and gas, cryptocurrencies and the super-rich.

"Many of the ideas are not new, as different countries have had such levies," Kenya's President William Ruto said.

"What we need here is political will. We cannot keep talking about change without implementing it. The world is watching and expecting real outcomes."

Rebecca Newsom of environmentalist group Greenpeace called the move "an important step towards ensuring that the binge users of this undertaxed sector are made to pay their fair share".

She added that the "obvious" next step was to hold oil and gas corporations to account.

(Reporting by David Latona in Seville and Simon Jessop in London; Editing by Mark Potter and Paul Simao)