DG ECFIN Annual Research Conference 2019: Economic challenges of the 2020s. Panel "Future-proofing fiscal policies" (Speaker)

Austrian Institute of Economic Research economist Margit Schratzenstaller's intervention focused on the bigger picture. "Future-proofing fiscal policies is key to implementing current action plans to address increasing inequality, migration, and global warning", she said. A reform of the rules is therefore imperative to close the 600 billion € investment gap that the EU currently faces. A reformed EU budget should finance expenditure that yields more returns when engaged at the EU level, like R&D, and should be financed with innovative taxes that cannot be properly implemented at national level, like a financial transaction tax and an airline travel tax. Finally, "we desperately need a harmonisation of tax policy" she said, "to shift the burden away from labour taxation towards profit taxation, through for instance a minimum corporate tax".