EU

European Union finance ministers failed to reach a deal last week on this controversial issue. Germany and France are at odds about costs distribution. The Banking Union is at stake since this law on rescuing and closing banks in the EU is a key point. The problem is to know who is going to decide what will happen to a failing bank and who will pay for it.

43 billion Swedish crowns . As stated by the Waste Ombudsman (Swedish Taxpayers’ Association), this is the amount erroneously paid out by the EU according to its Court of Auditors.…

Among the many ways to understand the climate of opinion and the culture of a country, looking at its fiscal system is one of the most rewarding. Of course, tax systems almost always rhyme with complexity, each system bearing the weight of its history. But the attempts to change the system and give it a new direction are highly instructive.

To observe changes, debates and new directions in tax systems is precisely what the IREF Yearbook is all about. In that sense the Yearbook is not in direct competition with other annual reports on taxation that typically focus on numbers rather than on the philosophy behind them.

Energy policies are the object of fierce debates due to their important and multidimensional effects. It is in fact one of the major realms of action of the European Union. One of the main goals of current EU policy is known as the three 20s: a 20 per cent hike in energy efficiency, a 20 per cent cut in CO2 emissions and a 20 per cent share of renewables by 2020. This IREF publication contains four studies dealing with the various facets of EU energy policy.

An old American joke has it that hell is where the Swedes are in charge of entertainment. But the last laugh in fiscal policy matters in Europe will probably go to Swedish legislators as they vote for implementing a reduction of corporate income taxes (CIT).

New regulations from Brussels for periodical technical inspection (PTI) of automobiles will cost Slovakia’s drivers some 30 million euro, with questionable benefits says Radovan Durana, IREF correspondent in Slovakia (INESS).

The first phase of a €600 million public-private partnership on the Internet of the Future (FI-PPP) was launched today by European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes. The project aims to stimulate internet innovation, and reposes on the argument that “if we don’t invest and innovate first, our global competitors will”. Surprising point of view, giving the huge wave of innovations in the Internet area and the fact that they occurred without the help of any government.

On Wednesday16 March 2011 the EU Commission published a proposal to introduce a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB). A few days earlier, on Friday 11 March, the heads of state of the Euro area almost agreed on a « Pact for the Euro » to save the common currency from financial meltdown and come to the rescue of delinquent members (an agreement that subsequently came unstitched). These two events did not appear to be linked, except in timing. But they both illustrated, each in their own way, what one could call the EU’s « Icarus Complex ».

Environmental tax reforms have a history of almost two decades and were viewed as a way to the better world the “double-dividend” theory predicted. Much “political capital” has been invested in policies leading to environmental tax reforms on European and national levels from 1992 (the year of the first EU-wide energy and carbon tax proposal) till today. In this report, the authors compare shares of environmental taxes on GDP and overall tax revenues in the EU from 1995 till 2010 to identify the real impact of such efforts.

The newly reappointed President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso asked the former EU Competition Commissar Mario Monti to draw a report and advance “options and recommendations” to re-launch the European Union internal market. Istituo Bruno Leoni, Italy, recently published a critical appraisal of the Monti report. Our Director of research, Pierre Garello, contributed to this analysis of the propositions currently in vogue in Brussels.