Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-06-12-Speech-3-289"
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"en.20020612.7.3-289"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, few issues contain so much political dynamite and evoke so many feelings as tax issues. In a poem, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, writing at the turn of the nineteenth century, highlighted five dangers in life: sheriffs and their constables, alcohol, women and the Devil. ‘First comes the sheriff with his hard and overbearing ways; he’ll rob you of inheritance, prosperity and farm.’
The fact that taxes have a special role to play in my own country, in which we have the world’s highest taxes, doubtless does not surprise anyone. It is not, however, only in Sweden that the issue of taxes, particularly at EU level, is difficult to deal with. There is also anxiety that, as Mrs Villiers and Mrs Honeyball pointed out, the next step after the common exchange of information might be the harmonisation of taxes, including direct taxes.
We in the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party are not prepared to allow the EU to decide about direct taxes. What, of course, we can appreciate, however, are the advantages of, and need for, greater cooperation within that area too. It is a question of increasing tax officials’ understanding of the Member States’ tax systems and the fact that, for example, one country might wish to reduce its high taxes; it is a matter of raising the level of training and, in that way, improving the way in which the tax system operates in the internal market; and it is about combating fraud, promoting developments in the computer field and ensuring that the candidate countries are fully involved.
We therefore support the Commission’s proposal and the report by Mr García-Margallo y Marfil, we endorse the rapporteur’s observation concerning the VAT system and country of origin principle and we also support the amendments by the Committee on Budgetary Control.
Allow me to emphasise how important it is for issues concerning personal privacy and the use of personal data to be dealt with in accordance with existing EU and national regulations. That is important, especially in the area of tax."@en1
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