The slippery slope of QMV in tax matters
| Author | Raymond Luja |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X19863991 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
The slippery slope
of QMV in tax matters
Raymond Luja*
Last January, the European Commission launched a major effort to speed up the adoption of EU
legislation in the area of taxation, as announced in Commission President Juncker’s State of the
Union. Its 2019 Communication was entitled: ‘Towards a to more efficient and democratic deci-
sion making in EU tax policy’.
1
Words like ‘more efficient and democratic’ make it hard for any EU supporter to put on the
brakes. But from a tax policy perspective one needs to keep in mind that taxation and expenditure
should go hand in hand. As long as budgets for social security, education, transportation, defense
and more are still set at national levels, the prerogative to design a proper tax system suiting a
Member State’s needs should also be there. Taxation is no aim in itself: it serves primarily to
facilitate government expenditure (even though it might be used for redistributive purposes and for
nudging taxpayer’s behavior as well).
That being said, in order to guarantee proper taxation as envisaged by Member States, inter-
national cooperation is a necessity to make sure taxation works out as intended. In order to address
tax avoidance, tax evasion and double taxation, some degree of coordination at the EU level is a
luxury we cannot do without in an internal market. The question remains, however, how we can
draw a line between coordination to make sure national tax systems serve their intended purpose –
as determined by each Member State – without harming the internal market and preferably
improve it, and coordination with the purpose of getting national tax systems more in line with
‘best practices’ or standards acceptable to the EU’s largest economies.
*Professor of Comparative Tax Law, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands; Loyens & Loeff N.V.,
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Raymond Luja, Maastricht University Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid, P.O. Box 616, Maastricht 6200 MD, The Nether-
lands.
E-mail: raymond.luja@maastrichtuniversity.nl
1. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council, Towards a
more efficient and democratic decision making in EU tax policy, COM(2019) 8 final.
Maastricht Journal of European and
Comparative Law
2019, Vol. 26(3) 343–347
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1023263X19863991
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