Posted on 09/09/2004 2:51:32 PM PDT by Lukasz
Poland joined an outcry Thursday against a French proposal to cut structural funds for new European Union members that have tax rates below the EU average.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski, addressing an economic forum in Krynica, said: "One cannot accept the proposals aimed at fighting against so-called fiscal dumping."
"We should be able to benefit from structural funds, if not we will never be able to overcome the inequalities that exist on our continent," said the president of the largest country among the 10 that joined the EU in May.
"European leaders must renounce their egoism," he added in the opening debate of the three-day event.
Kwasniewski's comments added to opposition expressed by other EU member states and the European Commission to the proposal unveiled by French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday.
Sarkozy argued that if the new member countries were rich enough to lower taxes they should not seek structural aid funds from old member states.
Hungary on Thursday joined the Czech Republic and Slovakia -- all among the 10 countries that joined the EU on May 1 -- to criticize the Sarkozy plan.
"This is completely unacceptable and I am convinced that it will never be adopted by the EU," Hungarian Finance Minister Tibor Draskovics was quoted as saying in the Hungarian daily Vilaggazdasag.
"The corporate tax rules in the EU are the responsibility of national governments," he said.
"There is no proof that certain investors who leave France and transfer jobs to new member states are doing so because of lower corporate tax rates there," Draskovics added.
The issue is expected to be debated Friday when the 25 EU finance ministers meet for two-day informal talks in Scheveningen, the Netherlands.
The low corporate tax rates in several of the 10 new EU member countries has been a hot-button issue, with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac vowing in May to work together to harmonise tax rates in order to prevent what they see as fiscal dumping rates by new member states.
But tax harmonisation is opposed by other old EU members, especially Britain which is vehemently against alignment of tax rates.
Tens of billions of euros are available to EU members every year for development projects designed to alleviate economic differences between the bloc's regions.
Outgoing EU Budget Commissioner Michaele Schreyer said earlier this year that new members were not funding their tax advantages with EU funds, but warned them they would have to abide by the bloc's rules and raise matching funds for EU structural aid.
You don't have any camels ? So you aren't from Mongolia ! Where do you live ?
...Kazakhstan ?
You could be an American, technically Russia and America are only 60 miles apart between the Bering Strait.
Believe me, camels are smelly, dirty and very slow animals.
SUVs are much better as a transport :-)
Russia borders many countries.
I even could be Polish!
So do you agree that the Marshall Plan after WWII was a good thing?
Well, you understand, my country, whatever it is, never got this aid, so I can't really judge...
I'm starting to think that anything with the word "Union" in the title is going to be nothing but trouble. Poland, stay out 'da EU!
Azerbaijan ?
From your freeper name, I would guess, you're from Bulgaria.
please stop!
Even two of you can't possibly name every single country bordering Russia :-)))
Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (through Kaliningrad), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and North Korea... how about that???
Wow!
But you missed Japan...
Well, you didn't specify countries that also shared maritime borders... if so, there'd be many others, including Japan.
Well, Russia is a big country and borders any country she wants to border! :-)
As we used to joke in old times: "American imperialists are constantly interfering with the internal affairs of the Soviet Union in all over the world"
By the way, while we are at enlightening each other geographically, did you know that Northern Pole belongs to Russia?
You are Russian from Northern Pole ?
There was an old SCTV skit, where they did a satire on Russian Televtion called 3CP-TV. One of the shows was called "What Fits Inside Russia" where the host would take images of smaller countries and drop them inside a map of the Soviet Union to emphasize just how large the country was. One example was, "Let's see the anti-Leninist state of Texas. It is but one puny lone star in large constellation that is Mother Russia, ha ha ha!!" Funny stuff, couldn't help to think about that.
Maybe your country hasn't been discovered yet...
My country is cold, but not THAT cold!
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