Environmental taxes: Applications in the European Union and Türkiye

Environmental issues are among the most critical challenges of the present day, significantly affecting ecosystems and societal life. Rapid industrialization, population growth, unplanned urbanization, poverty, and conflicts exacerbate these problems. Major environmental concerns include air, water, soil, and noise pollution, as well as climate change. Governments utilize environmental taxes and other fiscal policies as effective tools to address these issues; the polluter pays principle, precautionary and sustainable development principles, fees, subsidies, pollution permits, environmental impact assessments, and deposit-refund systems are among the key mechanisms employed. The European Union applies environmental taxes to guide producers and consumers toward environmentally compatible practices, while in Turkey, environmental sanitation taxes directly serve environmental objectives, and other taxes carry indirect environmental impacts. The EU implements its environmental policies through a multi-layered legal and institutional framework, employing market mechanisms such as the circular economy and emissions trading. Turkey, meanwhile, enforces environmental policies via national legislation and institutions, developing environmental taxes and carbon pricing in parallel with the EU harmonization process. In the field of renewable energy, the European Union supports the energy transition through regulatory policies and carbon market mechanisms, while Türkiye adopts an approach that encourages private sector investments through YEK and PPA models and focuses on capacity expansion. This study examines approaches to environmental policies, environmental taxes, green transition, and renewable energy within a comparative framework, and assesses the contribution of the European Union's long-term carbon reduction targets and Türkiye's policies implemented within the framework of alignment with the European Union to environmental objectives.