An excise tax with a trigger: fair relief, but with a deadline and public accounts

On Monday, Deputy Minister Endrit Yzeiraj presented Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee with a normative act built on a simple idea: when the Transparency Board's price cap exceeds 200 lek a liter for gasoline or 220 lek for diesel, the excise tax drops by 20 points and consumers pay 9.45 lek less per liter. The same day, gas in Europe reached 97.64 euros per MWh, more than triple its level at the start of the year, as traffic through Hormuz has almost stopped.

The idea has merit. It is conditional rather than universal, works separately for each fuel and, according to the government, follows models used in Germany, Croatia and Slovenia. An automatic rule is better than ad hoc decisions under pressure. And with inflation at 2.9% in September, according to Finance Minister Malaj, there is room for limited measures without fueling prices.

But some questions remain. Yzeiraj says the cut “goes entirely into consumers' pockets”; that depends on how strictly the price cap is enforced, not on a statement. The measure is described as temporary, but the public should know when and how it ends. Malaj's comparison with the EU average would also be more convincing with the corresponding figure, which the minister did not give.

Then there is the process. A normative act should be the exception; a measure that affects every driver and every haulier deserves full debate. But the criticism also applies to the opposition: when its lawmakers only read a statement and leave the committees, no one asks the government the hard questions about cost and duration.

Our proposal: Parliament should give the act a clear expiry date or a mandatory review every three months; the Transparency Board should publish the price cap every week and whether the mechanism is active for each fuel; and the Finance Ministry should publish every month the revenue forgone through the cut. The committee should hear from the Board before the final vote.