Our colleagues at the TPA have campaigned successfully against union subsidies. This means that the number of civil servants working for the unions at the taxpayers’ expense will now be…
European Comparisons
As tax revenues are flooding into the Treasury, the German taxpayers’ association (BdSt) has asked the federal government to axe the “stealth” tax increases and to cut spending further. Current estimates show that tax revenues will be substantially higher than previously thought: a record 600 billion euros in 2012 and 700 billion euros in 2017.
The BdSt considers that some 27 billion euros could be saved in the federal budget.
By Nicolas Lecaussin
Can you imagine that unemployment has been “priority number one” for French politicians over the past 35 years! Left, right and center have all claimed that their first objective was to reduce unemployment, in particular among young people. Yet they have failed every time. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy regularly repeated that “the French social model has protected us from the crisis”.
Jean-Philippe Delsol
Tax lawyer, deputy director of IREF
The government’s goal of reducing the budgetary deficit to 3 per cent of GDP is commendable, even though such a deficit will inevitably increase the French public debt as growth will be low or even close to zero. However, the tools applied are both unjust and inefficient.
Despite being bombed by information, it seems we have forgotten the roots of the debt crisis. Instead we play a martingale game, where the only precaution after losing a round is to double the bet for the next one. The solution is not called EFSM, EFSF, ESM, SMP, OMT or banking union. These are just different names for a single problem: diluted responsibility. Unless we find a way to make local politicians pay locally for local promises, the euro project will be always in trouble.
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).
The Taxpayers’ Alliance has published a summary of its final report, proposing a Single Income Tax to tax streams of income once. As stated by Allister Heath, Chairman of the TPA Tax Commission, “the old order is broken and needs radical reform. But we are also realists: our proposals, while far-reaching, are practical”.
In response to the financial crisis in the euro zone, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI) has worked out and submitted to public institutions a plan which would help countries potentially exiting the euro zone to build stable and sound money. LFMI‘s proposal can be also used by the euro zone when attempting to strengthen the euro and to restore people‘s confidence in the single currency.
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 European economy is under threat. But it is not by producing another treaty that it will be saved. In order to restore the trust required to produce economic progress, the states first must enforce the existing treaties, in particular the Maastricht rules on a 3 per cent deficit and a debt of 60 per cent of GDP. If you support this position, please send us a message by clicking on contact@irefeurope.org
