Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-064"
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"en.20020205.4.2-064"2
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"Mr President, I belong to the majority in this House that rejected the Commission's proposal in November, and I would actually have been quite happy to have left it at that, but now we are confronted by a second report that we have to vote on. Unfortunately, the Commission is sticking to its plan to raise the minimum rates of excise duties. Today's are on tobacco; according to my information, the Commission wants to introduce a proposal to increase excise duties and to abolish the zero rate on wine, even though it is a proven fact that wine drinkers are more intelligent and less prone to weakness of mind in old age. What else the Commission plans to cook up the day after tomorrow, I do not know.
This proposal will not achieve the objective set for it, that is, the progressive convergence of excise duties in the internal market, and puts an unnecessary question mark against the balanced compromise achieved in 1992 under Luxembourg's Presidency between supporters of proportional and specific taxation. If this hapless proposal from the Commission were to be implemented, there would also be a massively greater risk of smuggling, especially in the countries of the South and in post-enlargement Central Europe, because the price of cigarettes there would increase by between 200% and 500%.
As far as the campaign against tobacco consumption is concerned, which has to be pressed into service in justification of the Commission's exorbitant proposal, I can only reiterate that there is no proof whatever that cigarette prices slow down tobacco consumption. Far from it, smoking then even becomes a status symbol.
In view of these considerations, I reject the Commission's proposal. The amendments introduced by our rapporteur, leaving it to Member States to choose between excise duty at EUR 60 per thousand cigarettes and excise duty plus VAT of 71% of the price, represent the lesser evil, and, politics being the art of the possible, I will, of course, follow the rest of my group in voting for Mr Katiforis' report with full conviction."@en1
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