Overview of New Paths and Patterns in EU Tax Development with Focus on EU Soft Law and External Factors (Part 2)

Abstract

A very different - more indirect and factual than formal legal - contribution to the EU tax law-making process is that of the influence of external multi-disciplinary factors. They relate in particular to economic, political and social embedding, comparative better international law, morality and historical imprint. As they are by nature external factors - and by the same token non-legal acts - their impact on the making and evolution of EU tax law is limited to inspiring the official competent EU authorities, eventually serving as 'bottom-up' element in the hard or soft tax law-making process when recognized and legitimized by the 'top-down stamp' of the official competent EU authorities. Paraphrasing our opening citation: 'Some true, some light, but every one of you / Stamp'd with the image of the European Union'. What thus happens in the end is that we are looking, in this era of fiscal transparency, at new trends and patterns in the ongoing process of EU tax development related to the joint impacts of respectively external factors to the EU legal process (Chapter II) and of the 'reshuffling' of internal legal sources on the part of the competent EU tax authorities (and also, in different degrees and levels, of parallel international organizations as OECD) (Chapter I). Finally, in Chapter III, the discussions of Chapters I and II are related to the strategic EU development of 'ever closer union among the people of Europe'.