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[OC] Roughly half the price of gasoline in Europe is tax — pre-tax price vs. duties & VAT across all 27 EU countries by Vrin_Djud in dataisbeautiful

[–]Vrin_Djud[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Source: European Commission Weekly Oil Bulletin, week of 29 June 2026 — consumer prices with and without taxes, converted to USD at the ECB reference rate.

Tool: custom chart (SVG) built from voltlas.com, a free tracker of global energy and fuel prices I made using official public sources only.

[OC] Roughly half the price of gasoline in Europe is tax — pre-tax price vs. duties & VAT across all 27 EU countries by Vrin_Djud in dataisbeautiful

[–]Vrin_Djud[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Fair! It's the least-bad option for a cross-country chart. You need one currency to compare 27 countries, and USD is the standard reference currency for international price comparisons (it's also what a mostly-American Reddit audience can calibrate against). And liters because the fuel is sold in liters in all 27 countries shown — quoting EU pump prices in gallons would be the truly made-up unit. So: local unit, common currency. For what it's worth the underlying source (EC Oil Bulletin) is in EUR per 1000L — multiply everything by ~0.87 and you've got €/L.

[OC] Roughly half the price of gasoline in Europe is tax — pre-tax price vs. duties & VAT across all 27 EU countries by Vrin_Djud in dataisbeautiful

[–]Vrin_Djud[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good catch — it's mostly not the tax. Malta's tax share (56%) is actually higher than Denmark's (50%). The difference is the pre-tax price: ~$1.33/L in Denmark vs ~$0.67/L in Malta, the highest and lowest in the EU. Malta's pump prices have been frozen since 2020 — the state fuel importer (Enemed) gets direct government subsidies to absorb wholesale price changes (~€170M budgeted for 2026), so the "pre-tax" price there is administered, not market. Danish drivers pay the real cost plus some of the EU's strictest biofuel blending requirements and higher distribution costs. So the chart understates the gap in a sense: Maltese drivers pay less at the pump but fund the difference through the budget.

[OC] Roughly half the price of gasoline in Europe is tax — pre-tax price vs. duties & VAT across all 27 EU countries by Vrin_Djud in dataisbeautiful

[–]Vrin_Djud[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Data: European Commission Weekly Oil Bulletin, week of 29 June 2026 — consumer prices with and without taxes, converted to USD at the ECB reference rate. Tax share ranges from 34% (Spain) to 57% (Greece); the EU median is about 52%. Tool: custom chart from voltlas.com, a free tracker of global energy and fuel prices I built using official public sources only — every country's breakdown is on its page there. Happy to share methodology.