Month: October 2009

The debate on the EU budget after 2013 gets underway

A draft Commission communication on reform of the EU budget has been widely leaked yesterday. The full communication is expected to be published next month in response to the consultation exercise on the EU budget which was mandated as part of the Inter-Institutional Agreement in May 2006 on the EU medium-term financial framework (MFF) for the 2007-2013 period. It is not, in itself, a proposal for the next MFF to start in 2014 which will be the prerogative of the new Commission when it takes up office at the start of next year, and which will not be presented until the first half of 2011. Nonetheless, the forthcoming communication sets out the choices facing Member States as they prepare for these negotiations in a clear fashion.

I discussed some of these choices in my paper to the recent ESRI/FFS Annual Budget Perspectives conference. On the expenditure side, the make-up of EU budget expenditure in 2013 will be roughly one-third for CAP income and market support measures, one third for cohesion policy, and one-third for everything else – rural development, research and external actions being the most important.

There is broad support for shifting the composition of budget expenditure towards meeting some of the global challenges facing the EU, including addressing issues of energy security, climate change, competitiveness, migration and projecting a more ambitious global European presence. The key principle is that budget spending should only be undertaken where it can be shown that there is a clear European value added over national spending.

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Carbon tax galore

The Dept Finance has reinfored the expectation that there will be carbon tax as of January 1st, according to the Irish Times.

IBEC does not like a carbon tax (Irish Times), but the Royal Irish Academy does (Irish Times).

Frank McDonald writes about the impact of a carbon tax on the upcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen. As things stand now, the carbon tax will be announced on the second day of international negotiations. The opening shots will have been fired on the first day, and nothing much will be happening on day 2 with thousands of journalists hanging around Copenhagen itching to write about a success in climate policy. Ireland’s carbon tax will thus attract worldwide media attention.

The economic rationale for a carbon tax in Ireland was first set out in a paper from 1992.

Bob Holton lecture on globalisation

Professor Robert Holton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin will give a lecture at 7 pm in Trinity College tonight which may be of interest to readers of this blog entitled “Is globalisation reversible?” as part of the Institute for International Integration Studies Public Lecture series. Details can be found here.

NAMA SPV Opportunity for Private Investors: Form an Orderly Queue

Via RTE, we find out about the dividends to be paid to the NAMA Master SPV’s private investors

The private investors, along with NAMA, will receive an annual dividend linked to the performance of the Master SPV. According to a briefing note issued to TDs today, this will be capped at the 10-year Irish Government bond yield at the time the dividend is declared.

When the SPV is wound up, the investors will be re-paid their capital only if the Master SPV has the resources. They will receive a further bonus of 10% if the Master SPV makes a profit.

So, if NAMA loses money, the private investors will lose all of their €51 million, while if NAMA makes money, they will receive a maximum of Irish government bond yields plus 10% over ten years.

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Child Benefit

Tim Callan and Brian Nolan argue here that taxing child benefit has superior distributive properties to a cut in the level of child benefit payment.