Norway currently levies the highest carbon tax rate in Europe at €146.23 ($169.71) per metric ton of carbon emissions, according to a new report from the Tax Foundation published April 2026. The report tracks carbon tax policies across 24 European countries, revealing a dramatic range from less than €1 per ton in Ukraine and Poland to more than €125 in the Nordic countries and Switzerland. The average carbon tax rate among the 24 countries stood at €53.63 as of April 1, 2026.
The report shows that Sweden follows Norway with a carbon tax rate of €133.17 ($154.55) per ton, while Switzerland and Liechtenstein both levy €129.09 ($149.81) per ton. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Poland charges just €0.09 ($0.11) per ton and Ukraine €0.59 ($0.68) per ton. Finland became the world's first country to introduce a carbon tax in 1990, and since then the policy has spread across the continent. The scope of carbon taxes varies widely by country—Spain's carbon tax only applies to fluorinated gases, covering just 2 percent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions, while Albania, Andorra, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg in principle cover 72 percent or more of their emissions. However, exemptions and reduced rates often compromise the collection efficiency of many carbon tax schemes below those coverage levels.
The report finds that all European Union member states, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, participate in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), a market created to trade a capped number of greenhouse gas emission allowances. In several countries—including Andorra, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal—the national carbon tax base overlaps with the emission base also covered by the EU ETS, leading to what the report describes as "harmful double taxation." According to the report, when national carbon taxes apply to emissions covered by an ETS, "they tend to shift the emissions to sources outside of their tax base, leaving total emissions capped by ETS allowances unchanged."
The overlap between carbon taxes and emissions trading systems creates a fundamental inefficiency in Europe's climate policy architecture. Because the EU ETS already caps total emissions through a limited supply of allowances, adding a carbon tax on top of that cap doesn't reduce overall emissions—it just pushes polluters to shift their activities to sources not covered by the tax while staying within the ETS cap. The report notes that ideally, a carbon tax should apply to the carbon emissions of all sectors at the same rate, but the current patchwork of overlapping policies and exemptions falls short of that standard. Several countries have recently joined the carbon tax movement: Germany and Austria implemented carbon taxes in 2021 and 2022, respectively, while Albania and Hungary followed in 2022 and 2023, and Serbia introduced its carbon tax in 2026.
The report indicates that Germany phased its carbon tax into a national ETS in 2026, and both systems will automatically expire once EU ETS-2—the broader-based successor to the current EU ETS—applies to the covered sectors. The autonomous region of Catalonia is considering a carbon tax at the subnational level, and Turkey is considering a national ETS, suggesting the trend toward carbon pricing continues to expand. With rates varying by more than 1,600-fold across Europe and double taxation undermining effectiveness in multiple countries, the continent's carbon pricing landscape remains fragmented despite growing adoption.