The EU’s Slow, Sneaky Attempt to Engineer a Fiscal Union

Brussels is using the fiscal and economic turmoil of the euro zone to turn a currency union into a fiscal one, too.

 
There is a certain disreputable genius to how EU summits (or, more accurately, meetings of the EU’s Council, the body made up of the leaders of each member-state, the EU’s president, and its top bureaucrat) are organized. Typically arranged to last just a day or two, the tight timing ensures that talks will run late — so late, in fact, that those participating might agree to anything to grab some sleep. As the EU’s overall direction is, with pauses, forever forward, these long nights can have a way of ending up with another step or more being taken on the path to ever closer union.

July’s EU Council in Brussels was originally scheduled to last two days but ended up lasting four, just missing, by 20 minutes, the record set in 2000. True to form, it involved late nights and angry scenes. But what emerged represented quite a few turns in the ratchet of the EU’s integration.

There was not one deal, but two. The first concerned the EU’s budget for 2021–2027, a “multi-annual financial framework” amounting to €1.07 trillion, up more than 10 percent over 2014–20, despite the departure of the U.K., one of the EU’s largest members. The budget is funded from sources that include import duties, a percentage of the VAT paid within the EU, and direct contributions from member states. But like any would-be state on the make, the EU wants to increase its power to tax. It has now secured agreement to an EU-wide tax on non-recyclable plastic, a move under consideration well before now. Nevertheless, as the EU takes steps to combat the pandemic’s effects, COVID-19 has come in handy as an excuse to push this measure through. Never let a virus go to waste.

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Πηγή: nationalreview.com