The introduction of an environmental tax on heavy trucks in France: technico-economic endurance and political instigations

The introduction of an environmental tax on heavy trucks in France will take effect in 2013. This process is the result of a long-term and regularly reactivated problematization work. It has also benefited from helps of political actors exercised by seizing opportunities to act. Based on a survey of documentary and interviews with actors, this paper proposes to analyze these processes, that led to register road and environmental policy in the field of taxation. The institutionalization of the environmental tax has thus illustrating a road, tax and environmental public action, implemented by stratification and inadvertently.