EU Approves Tax On Financial Transactions To Be Paid Directly To Brussels
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
As Sound Of Cannons predicted, the European Parliament has voted for a tax on financial transactions, to be levied directly by Brussels. The vote went through by 536 to 80: only my own group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, voted solidly against the measure, although we had some support from UKIP and its allies as well as two Danish liberals and two Portuguese conservatives.
Anyone wondering why David Cameron broke with the palaeo-federalist EPP need only look at its automatic support for such measures as this. With a handful of exceptions – such as those two heroes from our oldest ally - the Christian Democrats invariably vote for higher taxes, greater state intervention and Euro-corporatism. I do wish British journalists would stop lazily refering to the EPP as “Centre-Right”; the EPP itself angrily insists that it is “a party of the Centre”.
The Tobin Tax might well be vetoed by one or other of the national governments. But the campaign for pan-European taxation is only just beginning. This will be the big battleground of the next five years. It’s time for a European Tea Party.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
As Sound Of Cannons predicted, the European Parliament has voted for a tax on financial transactions, to be levied directly by Brussels. The vote went through by 536 to 80: only my own group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, voted solidly against the measure, although we had some support from UKIP and its allies as well as two Danish liberals and two Portuguese conservatives.
Anyone wondering why David Cameron broke with the palaeo-federalist EPP need only look at its automatic support for such measures as this. With a handful of exceptions – such as those two heroes from our oldest ally - the Christian Democrats invariably vote for higher taxes, greater state intervention and Euro-corporatism. I do wish British journalists would stop lazily refering to the EPP as “Centre-Right”; the EPP itself angrily insists that it is “a party of the Centre”.
The Tobin Tax might well be vetoed by one or other of the national governments. But the campaign for pan-European taxation is only just beginning. This will be the big battleground of the next five years. It’s time for a European Tea Party.
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