Public spending

Corruption! A word that is destroying the base of the Government action. Above the “Cahuzac Case”, it is the whole public power that is stained with doubt and distrust. The clear and present danger is the rise of uncontrolled populisms seeking the collapse of a corrupt Government. But this would lead nowhere. The real solution lies in setting up a Small Government and the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity to ensure freedom. Jacques Garello, president of Aleps and board member of the IREF, wrote an op-ed underlining this issue.

6 lines against 20! In Germany, the gross salary is taxed by only few contributions (tax on salaries, solidarity, pension fee, Church). It was understood that flexibility is much more…

The IREF figures on civil servants’ working time in the OECD countries were quoted in the radio show “Carrément Brunet” on RMC.

Between 3 and 5 per cent of the members of Parliament, and 6 per cent of the senators: the parliamentarians with a background in business represent a tiny minority. An IREF study shows the contrast with four other countries where economic legislation is handled by people who know what it means. In France, the elected representatives are chiefly interested in tax money.

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.…

There has been a sizeable number of studies trying to identify the determinants of judicial performance on the country level. Such a design is appropriate to identify underperforming single judges…

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.

IREF has examined the provisions of the French government’s 2013 budget proposal, and concludes that these are confiscatory and arbitrary. Henceforth taxpayers will be subject to taxation on revenues of which they do not dispose, and forced to pay taxes that are above the corresponding incomes. Under these circumstances, IREF will endeavour to facilitate an appeal on this kind of taxation through a petition to the Constitutional Council.

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”.

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.