EU Commission dangles 1.6 billion carrot to try to get Sweden on board the Tobin tax

EU Commissioner for Financial Programming Janusz Lewandowski said at a press conference on the impact on national budgets of the tax on financial transactions that up to 1.66 billion Euros can be slashed from Sweden’s annual fees to European Union if the financial transaction tax passes.

The commissioner also gave Commission’s estimates on the income that could be raised with such a tax. The Commission is very optimistic and believes that countries viewing Tobin tax negatively will be swayed by this data. As has been mentioned earlier, backed by earlier negative experiences with similar experiments, Swedish ruling politicians have steadfastly opposed financial transaction tax that does not cover enough countries.