More and more EU countries are applying an pollution tax on flight tickets, one of the first ones was Sweden and now the latest one is Belgium. The big issue with the tax is that it is directly attached to the one who buys the ticket, which means a full flight pays in total more tax for the pollution than the same aircraft with just one passenger.
The system has to be redesigned, that it’s the company who handles the flight who would need to pay the tax based on the fuel usage of the plane, so picking a flight that pollutes less (green energy) should be cheaper than one that pollutes more (traditional fuel). This would encourage companies to buy air craft that are more environment friendly than today’s air crafts and it would make passengers to pick more environment friendly flights to their destination.
With the current environment tax on flights, it just hurts the end customer with higher prices without having any way to affect the flight providers choice of air crafts.
The big struggle EU has ahead of itself is to make it better for the end customer (the citizens), this far it’s been about protecting companies towards customers and penalize customers (VAT on tax is one of such things).