One of the ways that Eastern Europeans emerging from communism are trying to make their countries attractive for foreign investment and, indeed, entrepreneurial activity generally, is low rates of corporate taxation (to a lesser extent, the Brits and the Irish do the same thing). Needless to say, this is a threat to the Franco-German high tax/high spend economic model, and so what are Paris and Berlin now trying to do? Ban this supposedly unfair competition.
Ominously, EU Monetary Affairs Commissar, no, oops, Freudian slip, sorry, ‘Commissioner’, Almunia, now seems ready to support this idea. No surprise in that, Brussels is all in favor of ‘competition’ unless, of course, there’s too much of it…