EU preparing ‘direct tax’ on citizens, but government snubs news as ‘speculation’

EU Budget Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski said that he would bring forward the plans to bypass national governments and tax EU citizens and companies directly next month.

The money would be spent on European policies including a financial transaction tax, CO2 emission auctions and an aviation scheme, Commissioner Lewandowski told the Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.

"A transaction tax can bring in a big amount of money," he said, and added that "the others will only contribute a smaller part to the 140 billion euros a year we are spending," the Commissioner said.

But while Commissioner Lewandowski has said that he will bring forward his proposal next month, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry replied to MaltaToday: "so far this is just speculation, and we don't comment on speculation."

The German and French governments were swift to sound their clear opposition to the move.

"The demand to introduce an EU tax contravenes the position underlined by the (German) government in its coalition agreement," the Reuters news agency quoted a finance minister spokesman as saying.

"The government's reservations are about the instrument of an EU tax as such."

France rejected as "ill-timed" the proposal for a new EU bloc-wide direct taxes to finance the EU budget, adding its voice to protests from London and Berlin.

"We judge this idea of a European tax perfectly ill-timed," France's junior minister for Europe, Pierre Lellouche told AFP.

"Any extra tax is currently unwelcome. It is much more the time for the member states and also European institutions to make savings."

Lellouche said "the idea of a European tax raises fundamental political questions and would constitute a major transfer of sovereignty and tax-raising power."

Britain's Commercial Secretary James Sassoon also said Britain insists on retaining full control over its own tax policy.