Taxing Times for the EU Budget Commissioner

The EU Budget Commissioner, Janusz Lewandowski, yesterday disturbed a placid political August by outlining proposals he will bring forward at the end of September to revamp the way the EU funds itself. Controversy was already anticipated over planned attempts to reform the Common Agricultural Policy and to tinker with the delicate system of national quotas and rebates which determines each country’s share of EU costs. But Lewandowski seems determined to plough ahead with an even more flammable idea, namely that the EU should be permitted to raise its own resources through direct taxation.