Tax policy in the EU: between harmonisation and coordination?

In the EU, in which, due to the single market, the degree of economic integration is very high, taxation increasingly constitutes an obstacle to the development of cross-border economic activities. At the same time, Member States are finding it more and more difficult to protect their national tax bases in a manner compatible with EU law. While the harmonisation of VAT has progressed in line with the development of the single market, direct (corporate) taxation still lags behind. The weak institutional arrangements for decision making on direct tax matters certainly bear some responsibility for this situation and have led the European Commission, beyond the project of a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base, to consider new approaches based on the idea of tax coordination. A recent application of this approach to corporate exit taxes may point in the right direction.