Does the presidential majority want to establish a “European tax”?

In the middle of the campaign for the European elections, a poster appeared on social networks, with the face of the head of the Renaissance list and the slogan “We need European taxes”. This visual is false, it does not come from his campaign team. According to our information, he was sent by the National Rally team.

In the middle of the campaign for the European elections, a poster appeared on social networks. We see the head of the presidential majority list, Valérie Hayer, looking towards the sky and this slogan written in large letters: “We need a European tax”. “It makes you want to vote Renaissance”, quips an Internet user, “with macronia, there are always more taxes to subsidize the federalist European Union”, writes another. Is this poster real and where does it come from?

A false poster is a “digital response”, confides a member of the RN

This visual is false, it is not a Valérie Hayer campaign poster. His team confirmed this to franceinfo. Moreover, the Renaissance logo does not appear and at the bottom, it is written “on June 9, we don’t need France”, a parody phrase. Apart from that, the poster is realistic, an Internet user can be fooled by scrolling on social networks. It’s misleading.

The visual was notably shared by elected officials or supporters of the National Rally. But the campaign teams of Jordan Bardella, the head of the RN list in the European elections, assure franceinfo that this montage does not come from them. However, according to our information, a batch of several posters was sent to members of the RN, by a cell internal to the campaign team. “At first glance, we believe that the poster is real, it’s a digital response”even a member of the party tells us.

Valérie Hayer’s team assures that it never wanted to create a “European tax”

For several days, on social networks or on stage, members of the National Rally have been repeating that Valérie Hayer wants to impose a “European tax”. “Valérie Hayer is very favorable to a European tax, it threatens the French”, said Tuesday on LCI the RN deputy for Somme Jean-Philippe Tanguy. “The French do not need a European tax”writes for his part the spokesperson for the RN, Julien Odoul, on X, in reference to the Macronists’ slogan, “Need for Europe”.

Valérie Hayer’s campaign team responds that the candidate never wanted to create a “European tax”. The MEP was indeed co-rapporteur of a text on the sources of financing of the European Union. And in this context, as indicated in this note, she pleaded for “a fair tax at the borders”for companies outside the European Union, “taxation of cryptocurrencies”a “GAFA tax” concerning the digital giants or even a “harmonization of corporate tax bases within the European Union”, within the framework of the BEFIT guideline, adopted by the European Commission on September 12. It is therefore not an additional tax, which would be collected by the European Union and taken from the income of all Europeans.

Talking about a “European tax”, a shortcut

Strictly speaking, the European Union could not create a tax: it is not authorized to collect tax, as this note from the French Observatory of Economic Conditions explains. It is therefore a shortcut to speak of a “European tax”. But the European Union can put in place, under certain conditions, a harmonization of taxation at European level, or establish taxes, collected by all the Member States, which redistribute them to the European Union. Measures criticized by his opponents, who denounce a form of “federalist” Europe.