MEP Madison: EU's current financial agreements sound terrible
While the chairman of the Estonian Conservative People's Party (EKRE) Minister of Finance Martin Helme approved the agreement on a long-term budget and economic recovery fund reached in the European Union, his colleague MEP Jaak Madison (EKRE) called the agreement "horrible" and said there is nothing to be pleased about.
Jaak Madison (EKRE) said on his Facebook (in Estonian): "As I have quietly read and tried to acknowledge the agreement, I am not happy about it at all. Although the federalists did not get everything (yet) they initially wanted, they still took a big step forward."
According to Madison, the federalists would have liked to have distributed €500 billion in loans directly and introduced several pan-European taxes.
The leaders of the member states agreed to create a €750 billion economic recovery package with a loan from the European Commission, of which €390 billion will be provided in the form of grants to countries in difficulty and €360 billion in the form of loans.
Madison commented: "It means we will create a new federation, where the European Commission can mandate to take out a huge loan on behalf of all EU countries. It sounds terrible."
Madison did not agree with the government's statement that the European Council did not introduce the common taxes in the agreement. According to Prime Minister Jüri Ratas (Center Party) and the Minister of Finance Martin Helme (EKRE), the €0.8 per kilo of plastic will not be added to the calculation of the amount paid by the state to the European Union budget.
Madison added: "It is called a tax anyway, but it seems like they agreed that the plastic tax is in fact now hidden in the part each country pays into the EU budget. Officially, there is no all-European Union tax but every country has to pay €0.8 to the budget from unrecycled plastic. It means that we have come up with a new tax which is included in the EU budget."
Madison asked how foolish can humans be to rejoice over getting a lot of money from the budget.
He added: "Are you idiots or something? We receive those billions of euros to close our independent oil shale economy in Ida-Viru County. We get billions to comply with some agreement on climate change that has no logical justification. We get billions of someone else's money to make us even more dependent on the European Union."
In an interview with ERR, the Minister of Finance Martin Helme said that based on the position of the Estonian government, they are satisfied with the results by the European Union Council.
Helme said: "It is usual to have such a mess with EU affairs. We all have our opinions on everything - we do not agree on everything. Even though we are supporting the same views, sometimes we disagree on a few things. I think, if we take a look from the perspective of the Estonian state, I believe the decision we made is positive."
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Editor: Katriin Eikin Sein