Proposal for Changes in the Financing System of the EU Budget Poland’s Position

Abstract

Abstract The present system of financing the budget of the European Union (EU) has been criticized for many years, and there are many good reasons for replacing a substantial share of the existing resources with EU taxes. The EU Commission has recently presented a proposal for two new EU taxes: a new value-added tax (VAT) and a foreign transactions tax (FTT). The main objective of this article is to review the Commission’s proposal to finance part of the EU budget through those new EU taxes and to assess the proposal from the point of view of Polish interests. The article begins with a brief characterization of the current system of EU resources and the main criticisms of it. Next, the proposal for the two new EU taxes (VAT and FTT) to supplement and modify the present resources of the EU budget is discussed, and its pros and cons are elaborated. Then Poland’s official position on both proposals is reviewed and assessed. The conclusions compare the pros and cons of the proposal from the point of view of Poland’s contributions to the EU budget.