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If airports are too expensive Ryanair has a straightforward policy of not flying there. So when the Swedish Government proposed an airport environment tax of SEK 94 (£7 / $13) on economy flights within Europe starting this August. Ryanair responded by dropping a number of its flights to Sweden but not mentioning that the tax was aimed at mitigating the environmental damage accrued by aviation. Ryanair will drop its London Luton <> Stockholm-Vasteras and reduce its Malmo-Sturup <> London-Stansted and Gothenburg City Airport <> Glasgow-Prestwick flight frequencies from the 28th of October 2006.

The debate is now being opened up as Ryanair are not alone in moving their operations away from Sweden. Copenhagen has recently halved its airport taxes and as a result has had many low cost airlines including Air Berlin, FlyMe and Wizz Air locate routes there instead of Sweden.
At this moment in time the EU is looking closely at the tax and at plans to exempt some routes. This would be in breach of EU competition rules so the tax may not be implemented.

If it is implemented then there is one big issue that needs addressing as far as I am concerned.
That is the tax when levied as an airport tax does not differentiate between airlines operating fuel efficient aircraft running with high load factors and those airlines with poor fuel efficiency and low load factors. Taxing aviation fuel is one way of addressing this issue as this would be least detrimental to airlines with a low fuel burn per passenger. The problem would be that to work effectively it needs to be adopted across Europe. Another alternative would be to levy a tax related to the aircraft's destination and average fuel consumption figures. Thus a Boeing 737-200 would pay more for a flight from Stockholm to London than a Boeing 737-800 with blended winglets. The tax can then be related directly to the amount of Carbon dioxide produced by the flights.