France plans airline ticket tax to fight poverty

France is planning a tax on airline tickets next year to help finance the global fight against poverty, President Jacques Chirac said today.

While the idea is still being discussed at international level, Chirac said France hoped to put it in place as soon as possible.

The tax will go first toward fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, Chirac said.

“Without waiting, I asked the government to start the procedures necessary to put such a tax in place next year,” Chirac told French ambassadors gathered in Paris.

France, Germany, Algeria, Brazil, Chile and Spain will push for an international tax on airline tickets at a UN summit in New York in mid-September, Chirac said.

The idea for the “solidarity levy” was presented by French Finance Minister Thierry Breton at a two-day UN ministerial meeting in June. Brazil, Chile and Germany backed the plan.

In the search for new ways of funding the UN goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, Breton said an airline tax was “one of the most promising solutions for the developing countries and for the international aid architecture.”

He said airline tickets were chosen because airlines benefit from globalization and pay low tax rates, because airline passengers “are rarely among the poorest citizens,” and because the practical and legal feasibility of similar plans has been proven in Britain and elsewhere.