Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm – Born to give a political dimension to the common values of Europeans, the Union, with the complicity of the member states, has acquired power and skills that have weakened the people it was supposed to defend, argues the Irish writer Colm Tóibín. See more.
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Presseurop
The announcement by Spanish Treasury Minister Cristóbal Montoro on December 13, that he intends to publish a list of tax evaders was not well received in Brussels, notes Spanish financial daily El Economista. According to a high-level EU civil servant interviewed by the paper, such a move would be „illegal and contrary to community law and to the European Directive on the protection of personal data”.
Tax evasion in Spain represents €90m per year, with 72 per cent due to evasion by large firms and the wealthiest families, calculates the Union of Public Finance Inspectors from the Spanish Treasury Ministry. Nonetheless, El Economista is critical of the minister’s initiative –
Minister Montoro is knowingly acting in response a trend in public opinion that favours the idea that the rich should also suffer. But he cannot oppose the law or the rule of law. And in Brussels, as in Spain, the experts and the lawyers consulted agree that this hypothetical list of tax evaders is clearly illegal. On the other hand, in these times of exceptional economic difficulties and when sacrifices are required of citizens, it is a moral requirement to demand that the government battle efficiently against tax evasion.
Le Monde, Paris – Actor Gérard Depardieu, an icon of French cinema, is settling in Belgium to benefit from the country's lower tax rates. His decision unleashed a passionate debate on tax rates for the wealthy, economic patriotism and European fiscal policy. See more.
Geert Wilders’ anti-immigrant website “gives up the ghost without too much fuss,” announces NRC Handelslad. Launched in the spring of last year by the Party for Freedom (PVV), the site invited Dutch citizens to post complaints about the „nuisance“ caused Central and Eastern European immigrants. As the daily recalls, it initially prompted a “worried response in the European parliament, an angry letter from a group of ambassadors, and embarrassment for the government.”
On December 13, the Second Chamber of the Dutch parliament debated a PVV proposal to block Polish workers’ access to the Dutch labour market, which offered an opportunity to evaluate the response to the anti-immigration website. Almost 40,000 complaints about “drunkenness, problems linked to the parking of vehicles, and the monopolising of jobs” by immigrants had been posted. However, a much larger number of complaints, some 135,000, had been submitted about the PVV and the website itself.
For NRC Handelsblad, the proposal on Polish workers —
has hardly any chance of being adopted, notwithstanding the fact that no one is denying the problems linked to the arrival of East Europeans, such as the fact that they take up a large number of jobs. On the other hand, they often do work that the Dutch are unwilling to do.
For the daily, the campaign led by the PVV has actually “drawn attention to the relatively successful integration of 300,000 immigrant workers from Eastern Europe.” Historian Wim Willems even argues that the website has positively contributed to this integration –
The site turned out to be a turning point. The media paid more attention to the positive aspects of economic immigration. And public opinion shifted following the launch of the site, which, for many Dutch people, was overly focused on discriminatory measures to exclude [immigrant workers].
Polityka, Warsaw – Poles are staying in education longer and putting off having children – sometimes for too long. The country already has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world and if current trends continue, it may well top the global childlessness ranking in the not too distant future, writes a Polityka commentator. See more.
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