European Comparisons

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.

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

In the past year, Brussels has revealed its near-obsession with fiscal convergence in Europe. As the euro zone’s debt crises roil financial markets, the EU’s leaders have made clear that the only path they see to survival is centralized budgetary oversight and harmonized tax policy.

It is often rightly pointed out that the EU has (so far) no power to tax. True. But it has the power to regulate and uses it! If both, taxation and regulation have a profound impact on companies’ and, if only indirectly, on consumers’ decisions, taxation attracts more public attention largely because data on taxation are more readily available. As a consequence, the impact of EU and member states regulations on our economies tends to be underestimated. How can we correct for this? A look at the work done in the US by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, will provide some inspiration.

While several EU member states are facing an unprecedented sovereign debt crisis and others are struggling to cut their spending to avoid the crash, the EU Budget and Financial Programming…

The French government is considering the possibility to force companies that have paid higher dividends to their shareholders in 2010 and have more than 50 employees to pay a €…

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 ».

The European Commission has recently relaunched the proposal for a common system for calculating the tax base of businesses operating in the EU. According to the officials, the aim is to significantly reduce the administrative burden, compliance costs and legal uncertainties that businesses in the EU currently face in having to comply with up to 27 different national systems for determining their taxable profits.

Because the music stopped.

As Thatcher said, “They [socialists] always run out of other people’s money”. Portugal is now a perfect study case for this golden rule, with its quadruple-crisis.

No, this is not science fiction, but recent statistics from the most respectable Eurostat. With the exception of Cyprus and Luxembourg, France is the European country with the lowest value added by the industrial sector – 12.4% of GDP in 2009. To compare, the EU27 average is 18% of GDP and the number for Greece is reaching 13.3%, while some of the EU leading economies, like Germany, are scoring up at 22.2%. It is also interesting to notice the paradox that Germany is accounting for approximately the same number of enterprises per capita as France…

When reflecting on the causes of the current economic and financial crisis, the huge upsurge in private debt is one of the most cited reasons. Some people insist on blaming the private sector for this. According to them, the sustainability of its behavior has been clearly put into question by the recent events. But, what lies behind this exorbitant private indebtedness? This article is focusing on the Spanish case, with some references to the United States.