Differentiated Integration in the EU: Harmonising EU Tax Law

With perceptions of crisis and the need for the EU to fund its objectives, including debt repayment, becoming increasingly important, this timely book considers the potential of EU tax law for revenue raising.

Previous attempts to harmonize EU tax law have been impacted by questions over state sovereignty and EU competence in matters of taxation. In response, this book makes suggestions to clarify the concept of differentiated integration and to reinterpret some of its legal mechanisms to make both more conceptually accessible and practically useful. The book demonstrates how the challenge of unanimity, including the unanimity voting threshold, can be overcome by using the conceptually clarified ‘flexibility’, potentially in the status of a principle, to enact tax measures to raise revenue and repay debt. Kendrick concludes that the two interrelated imperatives of the perception of crisis and revenue raising should act as a catalyst for a recalibration of differentiated integration in EU tax law to avoid an increase in EU dependency on Member State national budgets.

This book provides a crucial read for legal scholars, policymakers, and practitioners working at the intersection of EU law, tax law, fiscal policy and the EU’s own resources.