Comunicacions a congressos

The aim of my speech is answering to the question if the Spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax is incompatible with the free movement of workers and capital. We are going to pay special attention to the European Commission’s request to Spain to change its Inheritance and Gift Tax provisions for Non-Residents or Assets held abroad. In order to answer to the question mentioned above five points will be explained. At first place I am going to describe the infrengement procedure established in the Article 258 that the EU Commission can follow when a Member State doesn’t comply with Community Law. At second place, we are going to explain what is the content of the EU Commission delivered on 5th of may 2010 regarding the spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax. Then, we will analise what establishes the Community Law regarding the freedom of workers and capital and how they are understood by the EU Court of Justice in similar cases. Finally, we are going to provide possible amendments that Spain could undertake.

Treaty Establishing the European Community, operative until December 1st 2009, had already established in its article 2 the mission of the up until then European Community and actual European Union is to promote an harmonious, equilibrated and sustainable development of the economic activities of the whole Community. This Mission must be achieved by establishing a Common Market, an Economic and Monetary Union and the realization of Common Policies. One of the instruments to obtain these objectives is the use of free circulation of people, services and capitals inside the Common and Interior Market of the European Union. The European Union is characterized by the confirmation of the total movement of capitals, services and individuals and legal peoples’ freedom; freedom that was already predicated by the Maastricht Treaty, through the suppression of whatever obstacles which are in the way of the objectives before exposed. The old TEC in its Title III, now Title IV of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, covered the free circulation of people, services and capitals. Consequently, the inclusion of this mechanism inside one of the regulating texts of the European Union indicates the importance this freedom supposes for the European Union objectives’ development. Once stood up the relevance of the free movement of people, services and capitals, we must mention that in this paper we are going to centre our study in one of these freedoms of movement: the free movement of capital. In order to analyze in detail the free movement of capital within the European framework, we are going to depart from the analysis of the existent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The use of jurisprudence is basic to know how Community legislation is interpreted. For this reason, we are going to develop this work through judgements dictated by the European Union Court. This way we can observe how Member States’ regulating laws and the European Common Law affect the free movement of capital. The starting point of this paper will be the Judgement C-67/08 European Court of Justice of February 12th 2009, known as Block case. So, following the argumentation the Luxemburg Court did about the mentioned case, we are going to develop how free movement of capital could be affected by the current disparity of Member States’ legislation. This disparity can produce double taxation cases due to the lack of tax harmonized legislation within the interior market and the lack of treaties to avoid double taxation within the European Union. Developing this idea we are going to see how double taxation, at least indirectly, can infringe free movement of capital.

La tradición filosófica clásica y medieval nos proporciona las claves para desplegar el concepto de orden político, especialmente a través de Aristóteles, quien, con su insistencia en la necesidad de combinar prudencialmente la unidad y la pluralidad, evita tanto la tendencia monista de Platón como la tendencia relativista de los sofistas. Las principales exigencias del orden en la vida política son: el reconocimiento de un bien común objetivo como bien moral social; el respecto a la legítima pluralidad social en que cada cuerpo intermedio buscando su fin particular aporta algo valioso al conjunto de la sociedad; la afirmación de la solidaridad humana universal sin menoscabo del recto amor hacia la propia patria y los deberes que emanen de tales solidaridad y amor. Que no se alcancen estos tres puntos totalmente no significa que reine el desorden sino que, herida por el pecado original, la naturaleza humana queda limitada y debilitada. De ahí la importancia de las medidas político-legislativas, que pueden ayudar al hombre a enfrentarse al desorden en la medida en que sean ordenaciones auténticamente racionales. Sin embargo, el mundo moderno, en la misma medida en que es anticristiano, es inspirador de algo más que un mero déficit de orden. Es inspirador de una política del desorden donde el objetivo principal consiste básicamente en destruir el orden natural, especialmente en la medida en que este orden natural nos recuerda la existencia de un Dios creador. El análisis del caso español pone de manifiesto gran cantidad de ejemplos de cómo detrás de una legislación y un gobierno autodenominados ‘progresistas’, se esconde una voluntad tácita o expresa de destruir la naturaleza humana y jugar a ser nuevos demiurgos. Frente a esa política del desorden, emerge la necesidad de reconocer el fundamento teológico del orden político.