[A-List] Re: Prodi calls for EU tax

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 22/05/02 16:46 -0700, you wrote:
> Here is a more datailed piece on this. Sabri
> ++++++++++++++++++++
> EU's Prodi Urges Central Tax Power, Opposes Big-State Dominance
> By James G. Neuger
>
>
>
> The tension between large and small states, and between the
> commission and national governments, goes back to the EU's
> founding in 1958. It is flaring up again as the EU holds a
> constitutional convention to overhaul its treaties by 2004.
> The constitutional debate comes as confidence in the EU sags.
> Fifty-four percent of the people regard membership as a "good
> thing," down from a peak of over 70 percent in 1990, EU polls
> show.


There has long been a highly complicated battle within the EU between the
centralisers, the national governments, and the public. The population both
benefit from the privileged world position of the economically imperialist
European countries, and suffer exploitation and oppression in different ways.

Nevertheless, and I write from England, where Europe is usually seen as
some other place, we have been listening to arguments from within Europe
for years. Late night sittings and stopping the clock used to be the depth
of the reporting in Britain of what "Europe" was doing. Nevertheless this
is a contradictory system in the dialectical sense, which also has a unity.
It is a contradiction composed of interacting subordinate contradictions.
This is the process whereby the more experienced European federalists have
been creating convergence over decades.

Thus Prodi knows quite well that when he calls for direct taxation powers
for the EU and for a single voice on foreign affairs and security (ie
bodies of armed men), he is part of a tradition that goes back to Monet and
Schumann with the original Coal and Steel Community, of floating every more
ambitious ideas, knowing that it may take 10 or 20 years to come to fruition.

The underlying economic realities of global capitalism and
inter-imperialist rivalry mean that Prodi's apparently speculative speech
is by no means utopian.

He has lost no credibility at all in delivering it at the very moment that
Bush is visiting some of the countries of Europe. On the contrary, in this
complicated game of rules whereby the different European interest groups
endlessly argue, Prodi is signalling over the heads of the national hosts
who will be dining with Bush, that Europe is tired of being patronised and
humiliated by the USA, and intends to ensure that this era comes to a
definitive end.

Chris Burford