Saying Yes to Nice will put pressure on to increase taxes
At present, each EU State has a veto on tax matters, but that veto goes with Nice. Under Nice’s provisions for so-called “enhanced cooperation”, a sub-group of eight or more members can agree to harmonise taxes among themselves and use the institutions of the union for that purpose, even if the others disagree.
Ireland’s low tax rate on company profits is the principal economic policy incentive we have to keep foreign capital and attract new foreign investment.
Because of it, British politicians have called the Republic a tax-haven.
ermany and France, with their high tax rates, want a level playing field for company taxes in the eurozone and want Ireland to raise its tax rate to remove the incentive for their own companies to move here.
States cannot be compelled to take part in enhanced cooperation, as Ms Creighton says. Ireland may still opt out. But if all or most of the other eurozone states decide to harmonise taxes, the pressures on us to go along would increase hugely.
The Irish Government has not been very good at resisting the pressure of the bigger EU states to rerun the Nice referendum. What price our resistance to tax harmonisation proposals? If Ireland opted to stay out of such a development, we would be faced with becoming a second-class member.
Ratification of the Nice Treaty would face us with the choice of either undermining a fundamental basis of Ireland’s economic success or being relegated to second-class membership.
This is a key economic reason for voting No to Nice.
Contrary to what Ms Creighton states, the euro is not an example of enhanced cooperation, Nice-style. All 15 EU Members agreed to the euro, even though only 12 went ahead with it. Nice removes the unanimity requirement for fundamental EU change and permits a sub-group to use the EU institutions for their own state-power purposes.
In opposing this, it is we eurosceptics who want to maintain the EU as a partnership of legal equals.
Anthony Coughlan,
Secretary,
The National Platform,
24 Crawford Ave,
Dublin 9.
