Here’s an example of competition EU-style. As the ‘Union’ continues to debate structural changes to its system ahead of the arrival of new members from Eastern Europe, tax is coming onto the agenda. France and Germany want to harmonize value-added and corporation taxes across the EU to (as the London Independent puts it) “improve the working of the EU’s single market”.

Well, there’s euphemism for you. The real reason for the agreement between these two corporatist states over the need for tax harmonization is that they both resent the way in which those EU countries with lower tax rates (notably the UK and Ireland) have been able to attract investment from abroad at their expense. In Brussels-speak that’s ‘unfair tax competition’ and, clearly, quite unacceptable.

Any such move would be bad news too for the EU’s prospective new recruits from the East. These poorer countries need the investment that lower tax rates would bring (free market Estonia, for example, has no corporation tax at all), but it seems that their rich uncles in Paris and Berlin want to deny them that chance.