President Ader: Solar panel fee mistake

Budapest (MTI) – The government has made a mistake regarding the administration of an environmental product fee on solar panels, the president said on Wednesday.

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Addressing the heads of parliamentary groups in a letter, Janos Ader said “the government, parliament, opposition parties, the green ombudsman and the president of the republic have all made a mistake,” when they administered a fee that did not encourage the use of solar power.

The government had not excercised “due caution” when setting the amount of the new environmental product fee payable on solar panels, he said. Lawmakers then endorsed the bill without looking at expected impact and the opposition and the green ombudsman failed to point out the mistake, he added.

He said his own mistake was not to notice this “environmental nonsense” hidden in one of the law packages passed.

Ader said that parliament should abandon adopting “packaged legislation” which is a bad practice.

He called on parliamentary groups to help correct this mistake in a joint effort.

Zsolt V Nemeth, the state secretary in charge of environmental and farming affairs, said in a statement that the majority of solar panels sold in Hungary are from imports and thus the product fee will have no impact on the labour market. The environmental product fee is payable by the first distributor of the product in Hungary, the statement published on the government’s website said.

V Nemeth also insisted that solar panels contain very hazardous chemicals which stay in the atmosphere for 550 years. It is the government’s position that solar panels are useful, but when they become waste their collection and reuse must be organised, and the product fee is intended to pay for these costs.

The opposition LMP party said responsibility for the solar panel fee must be taken by the governing majority that voted for the law and the president who “signed it blind”. While it welcomes Ader’s admission to the mistake, LMP rejects remarks in his letter which seek to dissipate responsibility, the green party said in a statement. LMP did not vote for the “solar panel tax” and it has even submitted its own bill to eliminate it, the statement said.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters