An EU tax? Yeah, right...
You'd never guess that Austria's more eurosceptic than the UK the way this EU presidency's going. First we had the revival of the constitution, now we've got proposals for an EU tax, a barkingly superstatist idea that crops up every now and again before traditionally being shot down in flames.
Chancellor Schuessel - correctly - told the European Parliament that "Europe needs a strong way of financing itself"; he knows full well, however, that it is never going to happen through taxation as long as the UK is a member.
Never mind the arguments in favour of such an approach (after all, it could well help to increase transparancy and leave less budget flexibility for the notoriously weak EU accountants to "misplace" dosh with, plus would make it clear to each EU citizen precisely how little the EU actually costs them while getting rid of the constant disputes over who should pay what, rebates and the like) - it simply is not an option at this time, as such a move would require unanimity from all member states, and no British government (or, probably, Danish for that matter) would risk it. Even if dear old Tony "This lady IS for turning" Blair tried to give in and accept an EU tax, there's no way in hell Gordon Brown would let him.
So why all the shit-stirring? What is Schuessel up to?
4 Comments:
There ain't no good old fashioned politicians left - he is feeding his ego and probably has something up his sleeve that he thinks perhaps we will find unaccepable so he is forwarding something even more unnacceptable first so that we breathe a sigh of relief when he does a little side stepping!
Perhaps he's trying to bolster his image as a pro-European. This could make whatever he wants to do later - I don't know, salvage the best bits of the constituion perhaps - a lot easier to achieve.
After all, the Eurosceptic tag, given form by the rebabte, seems to haunt Britain everytime our government tries to push for reform.
Schuessel is an idiot. Approx. 68% of Austrians are now against the EU and would love for their country to leave again. But he keeps pushing the EU everyone's throat. What a wanker!
What amazes me is that the British government opposes most pro-European initiatives (including a Euro tax), yet gets away with claiming to be pro-European. Seems to me that they believe in trading with neighbouring countries, which puts them in with nearly all governments in history (except Pol Pot...) and then pat themselves on the back for being progressive pro-Europeans. They are not in fact pro European, but anti-European in that they oppose European initiatives.
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