DUP opposes tax powers for Brussels
24 January 2007
In Brussels at the Constitutional Affairs Committee Jim Allister MEP voted against a proposal to promote direct tax-raising powers for the EU. The rejected EU Constitution contained such a proposal and as part of the on-going surreptitious efforts to implement it by the back door, there is a move afoot, under the guise of a review of the EU's financing system, to push such a development.
Commenting Jim Allister said, "I think it is preposterous to suggest that the EU, with its lamentable record of squander and mismanagement, should be permitted to exercise fiscal powers. Fiscal powers are strictly a national issue and must remain so. I am appalled that today in the Constitutional Affairs Committee, EPP members - the Group to which the UUP and Conservatives belong - voted in favour and helped approve this call for radical extension of EU powers. I will continue to oppose this proposition, believing firmly that taxation powers must lie exclusively in national parliaments. Though Euro-taxation would enhance Euro-scepticism in the UK, it is wrong in principle and unwarranted."
