25.10.2024 –
Discussions for the 2025 national budgets in the large EU member states are still ongoing. But a trend can already be seen: In view of the general weak growth in the large EU countries, the pressure on the finance ministers is growing. “There is an urgent need to stabilize debt dynamics and rebuild much-needed fiscal buffers,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, said at the fund’s fall meeting in Washington this week. But the temptation is also great for European governments to take the path of least political resistance and not impose additional financial sacrifices on voters.
The tax burden in the large EU countries has increased in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) in recent years. According to the OECD, taxes in Germany accounted for 36.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000. By 2022, the tax burden grew to 39.3 percent, up almost 3 percentage points, as Figure 1 shows. The situation is even more dire in France. There, the tax burden in relation to GDP in 2022 was 46.1 percent, the highest value of all OECD countries.
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