Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
To discourage unhealthy eating and limit the population's intake of fatty foods, thereby alleviating the current obesity “epidemic”, an increasing number of countries across the industrialised world are considering levying taxes on unhealthy food. A “fat tax” may be defined as a tax or surcharge placed upon fattening foods, beverages or individuals with the aim to decrease consumption of foods that are linked to obesity. This is not an entirely new idea – some theorists, starting with Arthur Pigou, a 20th century English economist, have long presented the arguments for imposing special taxes on goods and services whose prices do not reflect the true social cost of their consumption. Examples of Pigouvian taxes are duties on cigarettes, alcohol, gambling and environmental emissions. Support for another such tax, a fat tax, is now spreading across the European Union. On 1 October 2011, Denmark introduced a tax on foods by targeting those products that are high in saturated fat. The Danish Act (hereinafter, Act) confirms the trend in various EU Member States to tax certain foods or consider taxing them in the future.
1 See, e.g., OECD, Obesity and the Economics of Prevention: Fit not Fat (2010).
2 See, e.g., Hanna Rosin, “The Fat Tax: Is It Really Such a Crazy Idea?”, The New Republic, May 18, 1998.
3 A.C. Pigou, “II, Chapter IX: Divergences Between Marginal Social Net Product and Marginal Private Net Product”, in The Economics of Welfare (1932).
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21 For an analysis of the genesis and rationale of the Danish fat tax, see, e.g., Wencke Gwozdz, Showcase: On the Way to a Fat Tax in Denmark (Corpus, 2010).
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23 Directive 98/34/EC establishes a procedure which imposes an obligation upon EU Member States to notify the Commission and each other of all draft technical regulations concerning products before they are adopted in national law.
24 Communication from the Commission – SG(2011) D/5138 (Notification: 2011/0019/DK of 20 January 2011) and Communication from the Commission – SG(2011) D/51616 (Notification: 2011/0340/HU of 8 July 2011).
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28 Article 113 TFEU.
29 In Europe, the prevalence of obesity (body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m2) in men ranges from 4.0% to 28.3% and in women from 6.2% to 36.5%. Considerable geographic variation has been observed with prevalence rates in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe being higher than those in Western and Northern Europe. See A. Berghöfer, T. Pischon, T. Reinhold, C.M. Apovian, A.M. Sharma, S.N. Willich, “Obesity prevalence from a European perspective: a systematic review”, BMC Public Health (2008), 8:200.
30 Political Declaration of the High-level Meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, 16 September 2011, para. 43.
31 Ibid., para. 43, let. (g).
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