Lies, damn lies and Eurobarometer Surveys

Eurobarometer (about which more later) has just released a survey into driving in the EU, the results of which have been taken up by this headline in Euractive,

Europeans happy to pay more taxes for more driving

Yeah, of course they are.

In preparation for a White Paper on transport published yesterday (28 March), the Commission's directorate-general for transport commissioned a Eurobarometer study to assess the popularity of one of the EU executive's proposals, referred to as "pay as you drive" taxation.

The idea is to internalise all costs of driving, such as congestion, noise pollution and accidents, and to make people pay for the services they actually use.

In this, the proposal resembles the Eurovignette scheme, which affects heavy trucks and is currently being used on roads in Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden.

The new tax system would replace the current 'flat rate' of registration and road tax, which do not take into account at what time or how often a driver uses a vehicle, nor the noise and pollution levels of the vehicle.

50% of the respondents supported the new scheme; 16% were strongly in favour. 31% were opposed to such a system, of whom 13% were strongly against the scheme. A little under 20% of respondents were undecided.

Does this mean that EU citizens (natch) actually suport higher taxes? Lets look at the question.

To what extent do you agree with replacing existing car charges such as registration and circulation taxes with charging schemes that take into account the actual use of the car such as the kilometers driven, or the use of it in peak hours?

Nope. No mention of higher taxes. Yes people thought that there may be different ways of working out how a tax should be raised, but absolutely no mention of higher taxes here.

They lie. Or at least Euractive lie.