Junior finance minister Jan Kees de Jager plans to increase the tax on highly-polluting new cars, the Financieele Dagblad reports on Wednesday. At the moment, the difference in car tax between the most energy efficient types and most polluting vehicles is €1,500.

De Jager plans to double that to €3,000. Since January 2006, cars have been labelled from A (green) to G (red) according to their energy efficiency. The minister told the same meeting in Brussels that he also planned to increase the tax on environmentally-unfriendly fuel such as diesel.