“Introduce EU own taxes to reach sustainability goals”
NEWS
On June 20, 2017, FairTax researcher Margit Schratzenstaller participated as an expert at the European Parliament Budget Committee hearing "Preparing for the MFF (multiannual financial framework) post-2020: assessing strengths and weaknesses of the current MFF system and its relation to the Europe 2020 strategy".
Margit Schratzenstaller was one of three invited experts, besides Mihails Kozlovs (Member of the European Court of Auditors) and Ákos Kengyel (Associate Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest). Also budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger held a keynote speech.
In her statement, Margit Schratzenstaller pointed out some weaknesses in the current EU budget, in particular that it does not contribute to central EU goals of sustainability as anchored in the Europe 2020 strategy, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, or the Paris Climate Agreement. “The substitution of current own resources by tax-based own resources is an alternative that should be considered for the next MFF. Tax-based own resources could help to close some sustainability gaps in taxation in the EU, as the decreasing weight of environmental taxation or the decreasing progressivity of tax systems. Examples of tax-based own resources are a EU-wide tax on financial transactions, a C(C)CTB, a carbon tax, or a net wealth tax, just to mention a few.”
