Kazimir Wants to Address Unemployment Insurance during Presidency
Bratislava, June 13 (TASR) – The concept of universal European unemployment insurance and common taxation rules were the main topics of a meeting between Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir and Italian Economy and Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan on Monday.
This agenda should become Slovakia’s key priority during its Presidency of the Council of the EU, which begins next month.
“We’d like to create a joint fiscal capacity in order to help countries that have found themselves in a certain part of the economic cycle. Unemployment is one of the factors that gravely influence the potential for economic growth. We’re not talking about a tool that could be abused or permanently employed by irresponsible countries, but about a combination of abiding by the rules and creating opportunities to unburden national budgets from expenditures linked to a rise in unemployment,” explained Kazimir at a press conference following the meeting.
The finance ministers concurred that the tax systems of individual EU-member states should not be in contradiction with each other. They will jointly push for equal taxation. Kazimir pointed out that despite the high degree of harmonised value-added tax (VAT) in the EU, there are still cases of massive tax evasion due to a lack of cooperation.
“Transparency and exchanges of information among tax authorities are key. The tax administrations of individual member states keep to themselves too much, and that’s an obstacle to exchanges of information. Further harmonisation of taxes could be achieved in the area of indirect taxation. With respect to direct taxation, which is a sensitive topic in terms of tax sovereignty, we should start with setting up a common consolidated basis of taxation. I’ll deal with this issue during the presidency,” explained Kazimir.
Padoan added that it’s also of the essence to reduce the costs of European trading companies, which often complain about high taxation as well as pointless bureaucracy.
