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Cédelle, Anzhela; Vella, John --- "Differentiated integration in the EU: lessons from the Financial Transaction Tax" [2017] ELECD 279; in Koutrakos, Panos; Snell, Jukka (eds), "Research Handbook on the Law of the EU’s Internal Market" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 350

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Law of the EU’s Internal Market

Editor(s): Koutrakos, Panos; Snell, Jukka

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783478095

Section: Chapter 16

Section Title: Differentiated integration in the EU: lessons from the Financial Transaction Tax

Author(s): Cédelle, Anzhela; Vella, John

Number of pages: 34

Abstract/Description:

Financial transaction taxes (FTT) shot up the global and European Union (EU) political agendas in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In September 2011, the European Commission (Commission) proposed further fiscal integration among Member States (MS) by adopting an EU-wide FTT. Following the failure to reach unanimity, this proposal was set to become yet another unsuccessful attempt at tax harmonisation in the EU. Yet, in October 2012, 11 MSs presented the Commission with a request to make use of enhanced cooperation. This move began a new chapter in the FTT saga. As the enhanced cooperation procedure (ECP) had only been authorised twice, in the context of divorce and legal separation (2010) and unitary patent protection (2011), the turbulent progress of the FTT proposal immediately gained even wider academic and political attention. All three pioneering cases of enhanced cooperation have provided an opportunity to view this procedure in operation and each case brought its own valuable lessons. The FTT’s experience, however, has been by far the most challenging and most clearly illustrated the tension between uniformity and divergence within the Internal Market. It has long been discussed that differentiated integration raises difficult questions as to how to strike the right balance between further integration among participating MSs, on the one hand, and the interests of non-participating MSs and the EU project more generally, on the other. The controversial FTT proposal provided an opportunity for seeking answers to these questions in a setting where wide negative spill-overs set the interests of participating and non-participating MSs into conflict.