In a progress report on new own resources on Friday 13 June, the Polish Presidency of the EU Council said that “modifications to the proposed package appear to be necessary”, as “substantial differences in assessment remain” over the Commission’s proposals of 2023.
According to the Polish Presidency, only the proposal for an own resource based on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is likely to win the unanimous support of the Member States, which recommends that the European Commission prepares, “early in the negotiations and no later than by the end of 2025, a financial analysis of the extension of the CBAM scope, including various financial options, depending on the scope of the extension of this mechanism to new sectors”. As regards the Emissions Trading System (ETS) proposal, “several Member States raise concerns in terms of increasing the regressiveness of the system and negatively impacting the EU’s energy and climate policy by depriving Member States of part of the resources needed to pursue this policy”.
The Polish Presidency has also warned the Commission that “insufficient consideration of the problem of regressiveness” could become “a key obstacle” to the integration of new own resources into the EU budget.
At the end of April, a list of potential new own resources (taxes at the EU’s borders, tax on the aviation sector, tax on digital services, internal market fee, etc.) presented by the Polish Presidency divided the Member States (see EUROPE 13631/6). In addition to regressivity, the Member States have pointed out the pre-eminence of national sovereignty, particularly when the taxes proposed as new own resources already exist in certain Member States.
The Polish Presidency suggested that the Commission and the EU Council “should continue their work on other revenues for the EU budget”. It should be noted that in mid-May the European Commission revealed that the own resources package currently blocked by the EU Council would be adapted, “with new proposals”, as part of the proposal for the next post-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework, expected on 16 July (see EUROPE 13641/8). The following are envisaged: a digital tax, a tax on electronic waste that is not collected or recycled, a recalibration of ETIAS fees and fees on small packages.
In addition, the Polish Presidency invited the Commission to “update the frozen weighted average rate applied to the VAT-based own resources to ensure greater accuracy and fairness of the VAT-based contributions to the EU budget” and to improve the calculation methodology of the plastic-based own resource.
To see the document from the Polish Presidency: https://aeur.eu/f/hcu (Original version in French by Florent Servia)