Paper Titles & Abstracts

The integration of environmental concerns into fiscal policies has been used in different European countries as a mean to boost sustainable development, promoting new economic activities and innovation. This has been done combining different political interests with an area where public opinion has become increasingly sensitive, but the results so far are uneven and seem to be affected by the current crisis and the need to apply hard budget cuts. The case of Spain is remarkable if we bear in mind how the country was recognized as a leader on renewable energies during last decade, thanks to a favourable fiscal regime, and how things have changed in the last years in light of the crisis context. There are many factors influencing the changes occurred, some of them common to other EU countries, like the political preferences of the parties in power, but some others specific to the country organization, such as separation of responsibilities at governmental level for energy and environment, the electricity tariff deficit, or the transfer of authority to implement environmental taxes to regional and local governments. While the green economy was supposed to be the best opportunity for employment creation according to the previous government opinion, measures related to sustainability promotion have been put aside and reduction of the Environment Ministry budget is one of the biggest applied by the new conservative government. This paper seeks to analyze the different factors influencing the reduction of environmental related budgets in Spain and the possible consequences of the lack of a clear environmental commitment for the coming years.