French MEP Alain Lamassoure has proposed the tax alongside a
more substantial levy on text messages of €0.015 per message.
"This is peanuts but, given the billions of transactions every
day, it could still raise an immense income," Lamassoure told
Reuters.
"Exchanges between countries have ballooned, so everyone would
understand that the money to finance the EU should come from the
benefits engendered by the EU."
Lamassoure reportedly wants to be able to reduce national
contributions to the EU budget through the measure. Lamassoure is
on a working group looking at budgetary issues. He is a member of
the centre-right European People's Party, the largest coalition of
parties in the Parliament.
Previous proposals aimed at introducing email charges have
failed, but earlier this year AOL introduced micropayments for
commercial mail as an anti-spam measure.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Lamassoure has issued a
statement distancing his comments from the budget committee of the
European Parliament.
"In the European Parliament, I have been charged with the task
of making a proposal on the reform of the financing of the
Community budget," Lamassoure said in a statement issued to
OUT-LAW.com.
"Independently of this exercise I asked myself, in a
personal capacity, about the evolution of the taxation in the long
term," he said. He said that any email or SMS tax could not be an
EU measure because at present the EU has no tax raising
powers.
While not renouncing the idea directly, Lamassoure seemed to
distance himself from the email and SMS tax proposal.
"I insist these ideas are not on the table for our European
work, and, for my part, I have no intention of putting them on the
table," he said. "Therefore Internet users who felt affected by the
press coverage can be reassured."
