The international scenario has been constantly debating alternatives to mitigate the ecological crisis and environmental taxation has been one of the economic instruments ventilated, since it gives tax revenues while stimulating the introduction of sustainable measures in the productive activity, having as vector the polluter-pays principle. Some European countries have made real changes in their tax systems to include the environmental element as the focus of taxation, a movement called Green Tax Reform (GTR). Other countries, however, use such a nomenclature, without effectively implementing a substantial change in the tax system. In this sense, the paper critically analyzes the use of the term Green Tax Reform in the European context. To do so, through an exploratory analysis using bibliographic research, this paper presents a concept of environmental taxation, as well as a definition of GTR and its principles. From the analyses of the tax changes implemented in several European countries, the paper identifies which of them actually carried out such reform. It is concluded that a large number of countries, although incorporating environmental taxes in their realities, do not perform a true GTR, even if sparse measures have the potential to bring environmental benefits.