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Thursday, February 02, 2006

Letter: Shropshire Star

Tax claim makes me cynical on EU budget

The EU has officially criticised the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, for exceeding EU targets on borrowing.

A few months ago, the EU’s own auditors refused to sign the EU accounts off for the seventh year running because they were fraudulent.

A bit hypocritical surely?

Now I see that the Austrian president, in his role as president of the EU for the next six months, has decided that what we really want is to revive the EU constitution (preferably without referendums this time so we can’t say no) and to allow the EU to directly tax citizens.

The proposal is for the EU to establish a tax on money borrowed for speculation which they will then use to fund themselves instead of having to rely on individual member states coming to an agreement on the budget.

This, it is claimed, will stop the bad feeling between member states when debating the budget and among citizens when talking about who contributes and receives what in the EU.

Perhaps I’m just cynical but a more realistic reason for this proposal is to give the EU, which is guilty of serious financial corruption, a free hand in setting its own budget and will help to hide the true cost of the EU from the taxpayers that fund it.

Stuart Parr, Telford