Successful presentation of the first WP8 deliverable
NEWS
On April 25, 2016, Alexander Krenek, WIFO, and Marian Dobranschi of Mendel University in Brno jointly presented the first WP8 deliverable titled "EU Taxes as Genuine Own Resource to Finance the EU Budget – Pros, Cons and Sustainability-oriented Criteria to Evaluate Potential Tax Candidates" by Schratzenstaller, M., Krenek, A., Nerudova, D., and Dobranschi, M.
The deliverable was presented at the 2016 ZEW Public Finance Conference - Fiscal Equalisation in Europe, hosted by the non-profit and independent institute Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany. Alexander Krenek was the first presenter, and he discussed the weaknesses of the current system of EU own resources and the pros and cons of EU own taxes. “EU taxes have been an issue in the economic and policy debate for quite a while. They have been advocated as revenue instruments that may strengthen fiscal autonomy, legitimacy, and accountability of budget policy at the EU level. Moreover, the partial substitution of current EU own resources by EU own taxes is seen as a lever to make the EU system of own resources more transparent and less complicated,” said Krenek.
Sustainability-oriented criteria to evaluate potential EU taxes
In the second part of the presentation, Marian Dobranschi discussed the already existing evaluation criteria for potential EU taxes established by the European Commission and the current related literature. He presented an innovative contribution to the literature elaborated in WP8: “In our research we introduce sustainability-oriented criteria to evaluate potential candidates for EU taxes - i.e. these are evaluated not only based on the conventional criteria used in the literature, but also with respect to their contribution to economic, social, environmental, and institutional/cultural sustainability,” Dobranschi explained, “These criteria have been almost completely neglected in the discussion about reform needs and options of the EU system of own resources up to now.”
The presentation was followed by a constructive and fruitful discussion with the session participants. “We received useful comments and feedback, especially from Friedrich Heinemann who was the discussant of the paper, and Kai Gehring (both from ZEW, Mannheim),” Dobranschi concluded.
