Germany paid EUR 21.4 billion in CO2 taxes last year.
86% confidence
EnvironmentGermany
Omissions
The €21.4 billion is revenue from emissions trading (EU ETS plus national fuel emissions trading, nEHS), not a 'CO2 tax': the national ETS alone raised roughly €16 billion in 2025, the rest came from EU ETS auctions, according to the Umweltbundesamt.
The money is paid by companies that must surrender allowances (and is largely passed through to consumers in energy and fuel prices), not directly by 'Germans' as taxpayers.
For comparison, the same source reports €18.5 billion of emissions-trading revenue for 2024 and about €13 billion for the nEHS in 2024, i.e. 2025 was a record year — the speaker quotes the highest figure without this context.
The second part of the original sentence ('€11 billion for international climate finance') is not corroborated: the Federal Environment Ministry states that the federal government provided €4.7 billion from budget funds for international climate finance in 2025 (2024: €6.1 billion).
The 2025 emissions-trading figures were published in early 2026, so the MEP could have known them at the session date of 21 October 2026.
PrimaryBundesregierung – '21,4 Milliarden Euro für Klimaanpassung'Der Verkauf von Verschmutzungsrechten erzielte 2025 in Deutschland 21,4 Milliarden Euro. Die Einnahmen aus dem Emissionshandel beliefen sich in Deutschland 2025 auf 21,4 Milliarden Euro und lagen damit deutlich über den Zahlen des Vorjahres.