Governments will be more likely to back new EU taxes for the bloc\u2019s next seven-year budget if they raise money that national governments are not already collecting, European Council President Ant\u00f3nio Costa said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with POLITICO, Costa set out for the first time what he gathered from leaders during his tour of 25 capitals on one of the thorniest issues in the talks: how to build support towards new EU levies \u2014 known as \u201cown resources\u201d \u2014 that would generate fresh revenue to the budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer will help determine whether EU governments can agree on a budget by the end of the year \u2014 before 2027’s elections in France, Italy, Spain and Poland threaten to derail the talks \u2014 without either cutting spending on new priorities or asking national governments to pay more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t create new own resources, we need to ask [for] more money from the member states,\u201d Costa said. \u201cWe know that we need to keep the national contributions at a reasonable limit. For this, we need to have a credible basket of new own resources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, some of the options on the table \u2014 such as a tobacco tax \u2014 are being challenged by governments because they would tap into revenue that is already being collected domestically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tobacco is already taxed nationally in all EU countries, Costa said, meaning an EU tax could simply reduce national revenue. But newer products such as vapes and e-cigarettes are not taxed in many countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you are taxing the same thing or a different thing\u201d it matters, Costa said. If it\u2019s a different thing, \u201cthen it\u2019s really new money. Then it means it\u2019s easier [to secure an agreement.]\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Costa indicated that some proposals on the table can be “fine-tuned” to address concerns from EU governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt the end, we need to have a basket, enough balance between all member states,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Governments will be more likely to back new EU taxes for the bloc\u2019s next seven-year budget if they raise money that national governments are not already collecting, European Council President Ant\u00f3nio Costa said. In an interview with POLITICO, Costa set out for the first time what he gathered from leaders during his tour of 25 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36562,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36559\/revisions\/36562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}