Personalities “from seven European countries today presented a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) asking the European Union (EU) to adopt a permanent annual tax on the richest people in Europe,” said in a statement from the NGO Oxfam, itself a signatory. . The goal ? “Raise funds to reduce poverty and inequality at home and in the poorest countries, and to address the climate crisis,” explains the association, which estimates that an annual wealth tax of up to 5% for billionaires European countries could generate around 250,000 million euros a year. .
The European Citizens’ Initiative is a mechanism that allows European citizens to ask the Commission to propose new laws. If the Commission validates the admissibility of this citizens’ initiative next month, its initiators would have a year from July to collect one million signatures in seven EU countries. If successful, the Commission would then have three months to react: it could decide to follow up and start a legislative procedure, or at least it should explain in detail the reasons for a possible refusal.
The Commission validated 101 ICE release requests out of 123
Among the initiators of ICE is the French economist Thomas Piketty. Quoted in the Oxfam press release, he stresses that “Europe is becoming less and less equal”, a “large part” of the wealth of the richest is “under taxes, even without taxes”.
By the end of May 2023, the Commission had received 123 applications to launch a European Citizens’ Initiative since the creation of this mechanism in 2011 and had validated 101 of them, paving the way for the collection of signatures. So far, only nine initiatives have reached the required threshold of one million signatures and have therefore been submitted to the Commission. The latter was aimed at stopping cage farming, protecting bees, defending cosmetics produced without cruel treatment of animals, or even banning the trade in shark fins.
Source: BFM TV
