Reforma politiky životného prostredia Slovenskej republiky v kontexte prístupového procesu do Európskej únie
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY REFORM IN SLOVAK REPUBLIC FROM EUROPEAN UNION ACCESSION PERSPECTIVE

Summary/Abstract: In recent years, the use of economic instruments has becoming an important issue in EU Member states and in CEE countries. In waste management, product charges, taxes and users charges are the widely implemented instruments. For some products, there is also implemented deposit refund system and take back scheme. Economic instruments at-tempt to achieve positive environmental effects by employing economic incentives to change behaviour so as to reduce pollution or the consumption of resources. There are two types of classification of environmental levies: by function and by type of commodity to which levy is applied. Classification by function divides levies into three groups: cost-covering, incentive-creating and revenuerising. These functions are not exclusive can be integrated into the one instrument. The aim of the study is to analyse environmental effectiveness and economic effi-ciency of product charges for individual products, that has been introduced to the Slovak environmental policy by new Waste law and compare them with those already effective in number of European countries. Secondly to address the issue of earmarking and fi-nancing waste management programs in the Slovak Republic, with respect to transition process from regulatory to market economy and ambitions of the Slovak republic to became a member of EU. Main sources of information for this project were Database on Environmentally re-lated taxes in EU member states and similar developed by OECD. Information about economic instruments in CEE countries was from database of the Regional Environ-mental Center as well as national statistics. Results of the analyses shows, that European countries are most successful in fulfill-ing cost covering function of proper environmental treatment of waste (52 per cent) as well as revenue-raising function (52 per cent). Less interest is given to the incentive creating function of the economic instruments (31 per cent). Incentive effect is in some cases achieved with diversification between products in the charge or exemption from the levy to products, which fulfils environmental criteria. There are some typical prod-ucts charges, which prefer the revenue-raising function (e. g. oil products, packaging materials) and other with the dominant cost-covering function (e. g. batteries, tyres). The incentive function of economic instruments in waste sector is essential for fulfilling EU priorities in the reduction total amount of waste. In European countries interesting exam-ple how incentive function can be achieved is combination of various instruments in packaging (governmental agreements, tax and deposit refund systems).

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