EU corporate tax policy has long consisted solely in eliminating fiscal barriers. This changed after the financial and Eurozone crises when the European Commission proposed ‘market‐correcting’ provisions to increase tax transparency and ‘fairness’, which were partially adopted by the Council. Analyses of EU responses to the crisis have largely ignored taxation issues. This article fills this gap and explains the substantive re‐orientation of EU corporate tax policy through the concept of politicization. Based on 19 expert interviews, it details the politicization process of corporate taxation resulting from changes in global governance, media tax scandals, and the work of non‐governmental organizations (NGOs). Through the politicization dynamic, new institutional and discursive opportunities were exploited by the European Commission, Parliament and NGOs to induce policy change. We explore this reciprocal interaction between social forces and supranational actors to demonstrate that ‘politicization at the top’ can facilitate a more progressive deepening of European integration.
Dit artikel uit Beleid en Maatschappij is gepubliceerd door Boom bestuurskunde en is bestemd voor Radboud University Nijmegen De aanpak van belastingontwijking door de EU: gerichte maatregelen zonder structurele verandering.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.