Bulgaria Offers Change of EU Fuel Excise Policy

Bulgaria's government has offered the European Union to change the principle of determining fuel excise duty, according to Energy and Economy Minister Delyan Dobrev.

Dobrev said Friday that Bulgaria had made two proposals: for determining the excise tax rate on fuel on the basis of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), setting a minimum excise rate at a certain GDP, or calculating the excise duty rate on the basis of purchasing power of the population.

Bulgaria's Energy Minister boasted that six countries had backed the proposals of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Simeon Djankov, adding that the supporters were Eastern European states and Finland.

"A change of excise duty rates, a change of the EU policy on excise duty rates, is the only way we can get really different prices of fuels," Dobrev added.

He argued that all other policies like price freezes, removing the biodiesel component, etc, were only temporary measures that could or could not help, given the difficulty of finding out whether the promised discounts had been applied.

"These are short-term measures that last for a month and then we go back to square one," Dobrev stated.