Trilemma EU and EMU Challenges: Fiscal Competition, Harmonization or Unification
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Dată
2014Autor
Susanu, Monica
Abstract
Eurozone has grouped 18 countries in the European area, with different tax systems and
thus, on the background of a common monetary policy numerous decisions and
commitments for fiscal harmonization were adopted. Unfortunately, the realities did not
carried into effect the ambitions assumed, different fiscal sovereignties have perpetuated
their coexistence within the well-known frames, insufficiently tailored to the declared-only
desire of harmonizing and, in time, the inefficiency of institutions deepened and the
dysfunctions diversified, meaning exactly the scaffolding that the huge single market was
designed and built upon. Moreover, the perpetuated coexistence of different tax regimes
not only slowed, delayed or postponed the harmonization, but even stimulated tax
competition between Member States' economies, becoming both the cause and result of the
natural differences between countries. Tax competition seems also to merge most of the
reasons of the multiform crisis which shake the markets and the states all over the world,
not only in the European continent. Accordingly, the European Commission, supported by
Germany and the other Member States, proposes measures for fiscal unification in the
European Union, considering that the Eurozone crisis is the result of the common monetary
policy singularity, but in the absence of a common fiscal policy.