Lecture by Prof. Giuseppe Marino at Charles University: The Role of Tax Law in Modern Societies

On 1 December 2025, the Faculty of Law of Charles University hosted a lecture by Prof. Giuseppe Marino entitled “The Role of Tax Law in Modern Societies: A Different Perspective”. The event took place within the 4EU+ Alliance project “From Climate Change to Fiscal Innovation: Transforming the EU Budget for Sustainability with CBAM, Climate Tax and ETS”, led by JUDr. Miroslava Večeř, Ph.D., LL.M., Assistant Professor at the Department of Financial Law and Financial Science.

Prof. Marino opened his lecture with the idea that “Taxation is not merely an economic lever; it is a constitutional principle, it is THE constitutional principle. Any power, any right provided by a constitution would never be possible without taxation.” In his view, tax law is not only an economic tool, but a fundamental constitutional condition for the functioning of the state. He then turned to the ethical dimension of taxation, stressing that “tax law is a mirror of our ethical architecture” and recalling the principle of “No taxation without representation”, which entrusts democratically elected parliaments with both the power to tax and the duty to protect existing rights. He further pointed out that it is becoming a natural attitude that taxation should not only cover the current costs of health, education, defence etc., but it should also help to prevent those costs, with the scope of spending less in the future.

The second dimension of the lecture focused on “Tax Law as Prevention Mechanism”. As environmental degradation intensifies, tax law has emerged as a frontline preventive tool in the climate arena. This preventive dimension aligns taxation with the legal obligation to protect public goods, especially when those goods include the biosphere itself.

In the third part, titled “From Policy to Principle: The ICJ’s 2025 Climate Advisory Opinion”, Prof. Marino argued that “States may be in violation of international law not just by polluting, but by failing to govern the prevention of pollution effectively through mechanisms such as taxation.” He then built on this in his discussion of European jurisprudence, in particular the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in the Klima Seniorinnen case. As he emphasised, the Court’s message was unequivocal: although environmental protection is not expressly provided for in the European Convention on Human Rights, climate inaction can violate human rights, and States must act in a timely, appropriate, and consistent manner.

Prof. Marino then moved to the topic “The European Commission: Taxation as Green Governance”, addressing how the European Commission has, over the past years, responded to these trends by advancing a comprehensive green fiscal strategy (for example in “Single Market and Environment, COM (1999) 263 final”), which can be summarised in a series of instruments and initiatives. These instruments, he explained, illustrate how taxation is being transformed from neutral fiscal engineering into proactive environmental governance, following Article 191 TFEU that anchors European environmental policy in the four principles of preventive action, precaution, correction at source of environmental damage and, of course, the polluter-pays principle.

For a more comprehensive view, Prof. Marino added an Italian perspective under the heading “Italy’s Constitution Embraces the Climate: A New Chapter in Environmental Responsibility”. He underlined that “the health of the environment is inseparable from the well-being of its people, and that climate justice must include those who are yet to be born.” In doing so, Italy has reshaped the moral architecture of its Republic: it has declared, in the language of law, that the earth matters,  not just for what it gives us now, but for what it must remain for those who come after. Taxation follows.

In the section “Taxation as Enforcement of Climate Rights”, Prof. Marino stressed that the climate crisis forces us to see taxation not as accounting, but as accountability, and that accountability, as all legal scholars know, is the cornerstone of justice.

In the final part of his lecture, Prof. Marino turned to the evolution of ESG and its extension to corporate practice. He explained that Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is a holistic framework that measures the sustainable and ethical behaviour of a business, while Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a company’s framework of sustainability plans and responsible cultural influence. As he clarified, ESG and CSR are complementary: ESG is now a measurable sustainability assessment popular with investors, while CSR is a general sustainability framework mainly used by companies to fit with their scope of business. He concluded by stating that multinational corporations bring before individual taxpayers the highest responsibility to help Governments and International Organizations to take care of the right to live in a healthy environment through their best tax behaviors.