International

Yesterday the chair of the EU Budget Committee Alain Lamassoure, in making his proposal for an EU tax, spoke out of turn. The European Parliament is at present working on the re-focussing of the EU multi-annual budget for the period 2014-2020. Lamassoure's statements have thrown a spanner in the works of the European Parliament Committee on Policy Challenges, which was established specifically for this purpose. SP Euro-MP Dennis de Jong: “Consideration of the budget is yet to begin. As well as being inappropriate, these remarks were also unfortunate. EU taxes would mean that the public would have to pay more and Europe would demand even more power.”

The real reason behind an EU tax is that the European Commission wants to spend still more money while calling on the member states to make rigorous cuts. Now that the member states are looking to hand less money over to Europe, this doesn't mean that we should have EU taxes. De Jong: “If I receive less money then I'd better spend less, and this principle also goes for Europe. The SP is completely opposed to the EU budget rising even higher.”

The SP Euro-MP is concerned that because of Lamassoure's statement, the work of the Committee on Policy Challenges, of which De Jong is a member, threatens to become meaningless. "I'm going to raise this in the committee this week," he says. "Our work must not be trivialised."