Water taxation in European Union (EU) countries is adapted to local conditions and institutional trajectories and contains a variety of taxes and tariffs to finance water services and induce a higher use efficiency. After having clarified certain concepts, this work offers an overview of water taxes and tariffs charged for agricultural water use in several European Union member states, both in water-abundant areas and in water-scarce regions. Mediterranean countries, such as France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, have implemented different tax systems on agricultural water abstractions to recover the costs of the regulation, storage, and management of basin-level water services with various levels of cost recovery in accordance with the provision by the Water Framework Directive. France, Portugal, and Italy have implemented an abstraction tax applied to any water source (surface and groundwater) as an instrument to induce water saving and internalize environmental and resource costs in the irrigation sector. Despite these efforts, current taxation remains very low in the European context. On the other hand, Northern European countries (including the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark) have no fiscal instruments related to agricultural abstractions (neither for surface nor for groundwater resources).
This paper proposes a methodology to compute a cost recovery ratio directly from the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-Water) standard tables. The methodology is applied to the Guadalquivir River Basin in southern Spain. Results illustrate that it allows cost recovery analysis in line with Water Framework Directive Article 9. Wider adoption of the methodology would enhance comparability and knowledge sharing between regions, countries and sectors both in the European Union and worldwide.
This paper develops a methodology for the economic analysis of water use proposed by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) based on the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEA-Water) standard tables. Our proposal satisfies the requirements for the economic characterization set out in Article 5 of the WFD. A case study in the Guadalquivir river basin shows a similar characterization in the baseline scenario to previous studies, including apparent water productivity. The main contribution of our research, however, is the proposal of a methodology that would enhance comparability and knowledge-sharing between regions, countries, and sectors both in the European Union and worldwide.
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