30/12/2005 10:27:01 am
When They Say "Fair", They Mean "Unfair". German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck (SPD) now urges the new EU member states to raise taxes. He wants a more "fair" tax competition, he claims. That is, he wants less tax competition. And he wants the new EU members to give up one of their best competitive advantages. If anything, that is unfair. And the reason is even worse: he wants less tax competition n order to keep the high taxes in Germany. Instead of doing the same as the increasingly successful new members, he wants to drag them down too. Is that a vision for Europe? Clearly, the destructive defence of an anti-social European model didn′t disappear from German top politics with Mr Schröder. And using the German payments to a wasteful and destructive EU budget as an argument makes everything worse. The new EU members don′t need EU contributions, their growth is twice as high as in "old Europe". Two mistakes don′t make one right.