Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-16-Speech-2-033"
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"en.19991116.2.2-033"2
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"Mr President, the EU will be faced with having to make very large financial investments when, in different rounds, ten or more countries from Eastern and Central Europe and from the Baltic region become members. Clearly, there is occasion for discussing the EU’s financial requirements if this process is to be managed successfully. At present, the EU is not entitled to raise taxes itself. Nor, as I see it, should it be entitled to do so in the future either. The Haug report does not involve our automatically introducing taxation by the EU, but it opens the door for taxation of this kind, which is bad enough.
What is not spelled out is nonetheless what a lot of people are obviously thinking. In the last few days, the Swedish mass media have been saying that the EU intends to introduce a tax on flights and mobile telephones. It is perhaps no accident that it is precisely in Sweden, which has far and away the heaviest burden of taxation in the EU, that imaginations are running riot when it comes to finding new forms of income from taxation. If taxes are to be directly discussed at all within the EU, then the Member States must first, in my view, show clearly and precisely which national taxes are to be reduced at the same time. Otherwise, our citizens will just be afflicted with new forms of taxation, and the EU’s citizens do not need still higher taxes.
How, then, is the enlargement of the EU to be financed? Yes, the alternative to new income from taxation is still that of reduced costs. This will involve better prioritising and concentrating on the major and crucial questions. The enlargement of the EU is one such priority. As long as almost half the EU’s budget goes on subsidising agriculture and as long as five sixths of it, including the Structural Funds, goes on subsidies of one kind or another, there can be no doubt that changes can still be made."@en1
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