Before the end of the year car tax in Spain will be increased for the most contaminating cars. The government, the IU-ICV and ERC reached an agreement last week to introduce an amendment to the Law on Air Quality.

The new measure is aimed at making vehicles such as 4 X 4s and USVs (urban sports vehicles) more expensive and making cars with the lowest CO2 emissions cheaper.

However, critics of this measure have pointed out that increasing the price of a vehicle that costs 40,000 euros by 1,200 is probably not going to make much difference in the number of those vehicles used or sold.

In Spain there are very few hybrid cars (those which have a motor that uses both electricity and petrol). Cars which pollute least are the smallest models such as Smart, Peugeot 107 and the Citroen C1 amongst others.

The latest car tax measure is intended to influence young people who are buying their first car. The increase in car tax for first-time car owners who can afford to buy a middle of the range 4X4 would be 1100 euros more.

However the President of the Association for European Car Drivers (AEA), Mario Arnaldo, has asked the government to abolish car tax in order to encourage drivers to buy new cars given that older cars contaminate much more. In his opinion this would be a better way of improving the quality of the air and reducing CO2 emissions given that ‘cars manufactured today contaminate 10 times less than those made 10 years ago’.