European Parliament heavyweights launched a new bid Wednesday to replace state EU funding with direct taxes on half a billion citizens and 20 million companies. The head of the parliament's budget committee, France's Alain Lamassoure, was joined by ex-Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt in calling for 2014-2020 European Union funding to be radically changed.
Currently, about three quarters of the EU's some 126.5-billion-euro budget ($180 billion) is paid in by its 27 member states, but supporters want negotiations on the next budget cycle, starting in June, to re-focus on "own resources." They want a Europe-wide sales tax of one percent levied directly by the EU as well as a 20-euro-per-tonne tax on carbon emissions and taxes on stock exchange and bond transactions.
Lamassoure said the current system for EU funding, which results in a stalemate amid huge farm payments to France and a vast rebate to London going back decades, is "the height of absurdity, a democratic scandal." The European Commission will propose changes in June. So far it has suggested that only about one third - not all of the EU's funding - should come from these "own resources." The bloc's biggest states are against EU taxes, which they see as eroding national power and as vote-losers for incumbent governments.
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