Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-14-Speech-3-349"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20011114.13.3-349"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I am really sorry but, as far as this draft directive is concerned, I am unable to help reconcile the two institutional bodies. I am sorry, but I must recommend that the Commission proposal be rejected. As you know, cigarettes are not a tax-free commodity. They are already subject to excise and value added tax and in Europe these taxes are extremely high, accounting for 70% to 80% of their price. The Commission has proposed a fixed minimum tax of EUR 70, in addition to the system of proportional taxation which already applies.
The argument is that, instead of converging, taxation diverges from one country to another in the Union. That is the first mistake. It is not true that there are tax divergences; there is no particular convergence, but that is not the same as divergence. There is greater convergence on cigarettes than there is with numerous other items, as confirmed in the independent study by the Directorate-General of Research of the European Parliament, which naturally was not written solely to back me up.
Why does the Commission feel that taxes should converge? Because they are one reason why prices differ, which is one reason why smuggling and tax fraud are on the rise. Of course, these need to be stamped out and Parliament has repeatedly proposed measures which, unfortunately, have not been taken up, in order to stamp out cigarette smuggling. But if price differences are to be wiped out, the difference in price itself needs to be wiped out. The Commission has admitted that we do not know if tax convergence will bring about price convergence. It is certain there will be no convergence because the industry is a monopoly industry and can therefore engage in strategic price setting. These prices are not the result of market forces, they are competitive weapons used by the monopolies and we are living in cloud cuckoo land if we expect them to level out.
Similarly, the Commission proposal makes no provision whatsoever to harmonise value added tax, which fluctuates from one Member State to another by as much as 100%. How can taxation be harmonised unless value added tax on cigarettes is harmonised at the same time? Indeed smuggling – if it is smuggling to buy cheap cigarettes in one country of the Union in which the tax on them has been paid and sell them in another country in the Union in which they are more expensive, which in my view it is not, it is the normal working of the single market, but insofar as it is smuggling or if the tax is not paid, as in the case of England, where the situation will not change and which has a serious cigarette smuggling problem, with 50% of cigarettes smoked in England smuggled in, precisely because the tax costs as much as the price of the cigarettes, the situation will not be affected in England because the Commission proposal will not affect prices in Belgium, Holland or France, which is where the smuggled cigarettes come from.
On the contrary, prices will rise in the Member States in the south, especially, of course, if we accept the candidate countries into the European Union; or rather when we accept them, which I hope we shall, prices will rise there as a result of this directive by up to 200% to 400%. Just imagine if there are derogations to cover this sort of price increase and just imagine what will happen with smuggling from the Ukraine or Russia or from China or India if we allow this sort of price increase.
The public health argument, that is, that higher prices reduce smoking, has also been wheeled out. How do we know it will? Because we have statistics. But the statistics are based on legal cigarettes. The increase in the price of cigarettes does indeed reduce legal smoking, but it encourages illegal smoking and in England the mafia is having a field day and has put the cigarette market completely out of kilter for precisely this reason.
Furthermore, Commissioner, I must say that the Council has not demonstrated the necessary respect or tact vis-à-vis Parliament, because a week before we submitted our opinion, it presented us with a political agreement in which it attempts to force our opinion. I hardly think that is the way to run democratic institutions but if, nonetheless, that is how Parliament is to be run, then one wonders why we won the Cold War. And I heard you say in your previous speech that you are a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. This makes we wonder how you can come along and support a measure from which, in the economic sector, only large monopolies stand to gain for reasons which, unfortunately, I cannot go into now, but you know full well that I am right, while, in the political sector, you come along with something which looks to me very much like totalitarianism. I think that this sort of difference between the theory which we espouse and the practice which we follow should give you food for thought."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples