Free Competition and Fiscal Policy in European Union

Abstract

Fiscal policy and the harmonization of tax laws are extremely important in order to prevent distortions of free competition in UE. The process of European Union construction is based on integration and liberalization of markets in order a loyal and free competition. This issue is really important in order to crisis superaction. In this context the fiscal policy has a very significant impact on countries economics in EU and on company’s management, especially for those most exposed to globalization. The impact of taxes on free competition, economic growth and employment is quite evident since the EU foundation. So, it would be expected a more significant progress towards fiscal harmonization among EU countries. However, until now the question of tax harmonization had no results. It remains a sensitive question in EU. Almost two decades after the entry of the Euro, after a deep economic crisis that endangered the European project, face to BREXIT, we raised some questions as base to this work: what are the political and institutional limitations to tax harmonization in EU? Why there are no further progress was made in the field of tax harmonization, at least, in company’s income? How does this affect social cohesion? What are the effects on economic and social cohesion? This study intends to reflect on the political and institutional constraints of the tax harmonization, quite necessary to the effective process of economic and social integration within the EU. As methodology, we will use a comparative study about income taxes in several EU countries and the relation to GDP, as well the deductive method to analyze the results we find and some reference studies on the subject. In conclusion, we will present the analyze the results and try to answer to these questions. With this study we pretend give a contribution in order to find an answer to the investigation questions.