Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-19-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20090219.3.4-017"2
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"Madam President, I wish to join the Chair of our committee in sympathising with Commissioner Kovács over the difficult situation he faces in trying to get tax issues through the machinery of the Community. He has to use maximum political tact in order to achieve unanimity.
While I wholly support the subsidiarity principle and the sovereign right of Member States to set their own tax rates, I would suggest to Member States which have not as yet taken advantage of the facility for lower tax rates on labour-intensive, localised industries, to seriously consider doing so.
In the country I know best, where we have waltzed into a 2.5% reduction in VAT across the board – with, as Mr Allister says, little or no obvious response or result economically – I would suggest that it would have been much more effective to have concentrated action in the particular areas of labour-intensive, localised industries and to have reduced the rate substantially from 17.5% down to the lower rate of 5%, or below. That would have been much more effective in getting people into work, and activity going again.
Areas such as house renovations and extensions, energy-saving improvements, and perhaps gardening and landscaping work and, as Olle Schmidt said, care for the elderly and care for children, are the ones which would get people into work and probably increase the tax-take, because those people would be paying tax on their incomes as well.
It is a win-win situation to concentrate in those areas, and I urge all those Member States which have not yet taken advantage of this, including and especially my own country, to do so."@en1
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