Consumers, businesses and even government departments could pay a special tax on emails and mobile phone text messages under a scheme floated by a centre-right French MEP to finance the EU. Alain Lamassoure, rapporteur of the European Parliament's budget committee, has suggested to all 25 EU national parliaments and governments that users pay a "tiny" tax of €0.15 (10p) on SMS text messages and €0.00001 on every email. "I have discussed this with national parliaments in Luxembourg, Portugal, Finland, Germany and France with varying responses," he said."I have not met my UK counterparts so far but I had a written response from the House of Lords saying the idea was very interesting - and the House of Commons Treasury committee wrote back, saying: 'It is none of your business nor ours,'" he added with a laugh.
Mr Lamassoure, a member of President Jacques Chirac's UMP party, has called a meeting with MPs and MEPs from all 25 member countries for June 21 when he hopes to persuade Laszlo Kovacs, the EU budget commissioner, of the merits of his concept. Calling it an element of "a fiscal system for the 21st century", he said: "Our idea is not to be revolutionary but to create a new system of our own resources without imposing new burdens on national budgets."