In 1973, in the midst of an economic crisis, the EU founding father Jean Monnet proposed a ‘provisional European government’ to the French government—converting the European summits into a council, with regular quarterly meetings. He also proposed that that council adopt further reforms: direct election of the parliament, to give European citizens a voice, and abolition of the right of member-state veto, to enable the council to function democratically.
Developments since have shown that the council has become ‘permanent’ to all intents and purposes. Indeed, during the 2008 financial crisis, it acted improperly as the ‘non-democratic government of the union’. [...]
The second side-effect would concern the European tax system. The need to implement a serious system of own resources would be an opportunity to resolve the current scandal of unfair tax competition. By definition, there is tax competition between states if one gains what another loses. In a resolution in March 2019, the European Parliament asked the Council de facto to include the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus in the list of countries classified as tax havens. The council naturally ignored this request.
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