The European Parliament’s proposed digital levy could raise up to €25bn a year for the next EU budget, five times the Commission’s estimate, according to figures shared exclusively with Euronews by MEP Danuše Nerudová. A digital levy proposed by the European Parliament to help fund the EU’s next long-term budget could raise up to €25bn a year, according to leading MEP Danuše Nerudová.
The new estimates put the yield of the Parliament’s proposed EU-level taxes far above what the European Commission originally calculated.
Talks are at a crunch point. EU countries are scrambling to agree the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) by the end of the year, and new “own resources” flowing directly into EU coffers remain a key flashpoint.
“We need new own resources to cover the repayment of the joint debt and to fund new priorities in the EU budget,” Nerudová (Czechia/EPP) told Euronews.
She asked Parliament’s services to assess how much the proposed EU-wide taxes on online gambling, digital services and crypto assets could raise. Their findings differ sharply from the Commission’s.
According to the Parliament’s estimates, seen exclusively by Euronews, the digital levy could raise up to €25.2bn a year, five times the Commission’s figure.
“The European Parliament is calculating with a much broader tax base than the Commission. The tech space also covers, for example, streaming and data processing services, which the Commission completely omitted,” Nerudová said.
The Parliament’s proposal widens the levy’s scope well beyond advertising and intermediation services and raises the rate from 3% to 5%. The Commission’s estimate was based on existing digital services taxes in France, Spain and Italy.
“This is a very conservative estimate, even though it’s much higher than the Commission’s proposal. But the huge difference is the tax base we are using in our estimates,” Nerudová continued.
Several member states, meanwhile, have expressed scepticism about a digital levy over “geopolitical concerns”, namely the risk that the US government could retaliate with new trade measures.
“These reactions are coming even without the digital levy. We have a lot of tech giants here, running their business all around Europe without paying a fair share. This is the tool to tax those companies, which are not on the same level playing field as the European ones,” Nerudová said.
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