European Parliament: UK and US are global hubs for money laundering, tax evasion | Hacker News Reader

European Parliament: UK and US are global hubs for money laundering, tax evasion

brusselstimes.com

119 pointssam_lowry_117 comments

So basically the others not yourself. Ireland, Malta, Cyprus.. nah.

I recall not so long ago a prominent European bank's branch in Lithuania making headlines for very explicitly laundering cash.

Then there's the whole ex dividend fiasco. There's a couple of frauds with Steinhoff, Wirecard... I mean seriously all you got to look is a bit deeper..

More likely this is a political stunt either against the UK or for the banking union as one of the things it can solve for (a common anti fraud system, etc)

[1] https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1240097/lithuania-c...

Don’t forget Luxembourg, Monaco …

EDIT the Netherlands is another one that flies under the radar quite well - Lichtenstein I believe has an up and coming financial services industry too

Liechtenstein and Monaco are not members of the EU.

But they make the policies of the EU possible.

How may EU citizens, especially EU elites, hide there money in those places?

> Liechtenstein and Monaco are not members of the EU

come off it. They're very much jacked into the EU economy.

Those countries are not really tax heavens anymore. Especially Ireland changed a lot!

You missed the one where the magic really happens...

"The Netherlands is still one of the world's main tax havens, coming in fourth place on Tax Justice Network's biennial ranking of tax havens. Only the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda scored worse than the Netherlands when it came to tax avoidance."

https://nltimes.nl/2021/03/09/netherlands-worlds-4th-biggest...

"Bermuda? Guess again. Turns out Holland is the tax haven of choice for US companies"

https://thecorrespondent.com/6942/bermuda-guess-again-turns-...

"The Coronavirus exposes the Netherlands as a tax haven – again"

https://www.euractiv.com/section/economic-governance/opinion...

But how? Living in the Netherlands I want me some of that magic. My taxes are through the roof (both as a company and personally).

You have to be wealthy to access this special tax break :)

Being wealthy doesn't help. You have to be outside the Netherlands and have your income outside the Netherlands.

Exactly. The tax haven aspect is mostly the level of transparency with other countries. If you're from a non-Western country (because there is data sharing among EU and US/Canada to some extent) have $10M and decide to invest it in the Netherlands or another tax haven, it's pretty unlikely the Netherlands is going to be all that helpful in sharing that relevant information with your home country so they can actually collect taxes.

If you're actually a legal resident of the Netherlands well that doesn't help you at all since the Netherlands gov't has complete visibility into financial transactions within the country.

Same with the US. Great place to hide money if you're from certain countries since Uncle Sam doesn't give two shits if some countries can't collect taxes.

Oh, don't you worry. Average person's labour being taxed highly is not considered a problem. It's rather a solution to many problems.

30% ruling (was 35%) is a good place to start.

Running your own BV was always stupidly expensive.

That's not exactly the same thing is it? That's a tax break granted to individuals if they're highly qualified and recruited from abroad to come live and work in the Netherlands.

I doubt this is what people are talking about when they say the Netherlands is a tax heaven. Italy and Spain have similar schemes.

Now you go to the crux of it, and how devilish this all is for the Dutch citizens. :-) You see, to note how intellectually dishonest the authorities that implement this system are, your argument, that the taxes rates in the Netherlands are not that low ... Was what the Dutch Economy minister used, when the Obama administration labeled the Netherlands a tax haven back in 2009 already.

For the citizen, it is indeed, a country with one of the biggest individual Total Tax loads in the world. You get a flurry of them and its not really progressive. You are basically paying into one of three tax brackets and the top rate of 49.5 percent comes very quickly for anything above to €68,507 ( aprox 80,000 USD )

The current world top countries by income tax brackets are:

Ivory Coast 60% Finland 56.95% Japan 55.97% Denmark 55.9% Austria 55% Sweden 52.9% Aruba 52% Belgium 50% Israel 50% Slovenia 50% Netherlands 49.5%

As I do not believe anybody in the Ivory Coast is paying those tax brackets...and as Aruba is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands :-) you are definitely in the top ten but that is only half of the story. After you go through all of these:

Income tax (inkomstenbelasting)

Payroll tax (loonheffing)

VAT sales tax (BTW / omzetbelasting)

Import tax (douane)

Motor vehicle tax (motorrijtuigbelasting)

Inheritance tax (erfbelasting)

Gift tax (schenkbelasting)

Transfer tax (overdrachtsbelasting)

Most towns even have a Dog tax! ( but funnily enough...not a Cat tax...)

https://www.denhaag.nl/en/taxes/dog-tax.htm

"... It makes no difference if the dog is big or small..." , what means they actually thought about it.

Believe it or not, there is even an Exit Tax if you decide to say its too much, and you want to leave the country with your assets. You then get all of the local ones:

property tax

waste collection charges

street cleaning/maintenance

sewerage tax

movable property tax (e.g., houseboats, portable kiosks)

The system is organized for the corporations, and special tax structures organized by the big four, and other organizations close to to the Dutch political system.

"...There is no revolving door policy for departing Dutch civil servants. Employees are free to take up any new position once they've served their notice period..."

Old sample example: https://corporateeurope.org/en/revolvingdoorwatch/cases/niko...

Its particularly for Foundations and the rich who can afford it, like for example the Ikea foundation based in the Netherlands:

"IKEA’s Flat-Pack Tax Scheme: a Corporate Structure Designed to Facilitate Profit-shifting and Tax Avoidance"

https://medium.com/@jurgeng/ikeas-tax-scheme-a-corporate-str...

The current world top countries by income tax brackets are:

Ivory Coast 60% Finland 56.95% Japan 55.97% Denmark 55.9% Austria 55% Sweden 52.9% Aruba 52% Belgium 50% Israel 50% Slovenia 50% Netherlands 49.5%

It doesn't help that tax systems are so complicated that it can be almost impossible to make meaningful like-for-like comparisons in discussions like this.

For example, the UK isn't listed there, yet in reality the way our system works creates brackets where some people do have an effective marginal income tax rate over 60%. Worse, the system isn't entirely progressive, because those brackets don't coincide with the final marginal rate of income tax for those with the highest incomes.

Rather like the Dutch, for those of us living in the UK and those of us operating small businesses here, who are paying the full intended tax rates, it's frustrating to see the games played by the huge multinationals and UHNW individuals that are clearly forms of tax avoidance, and to see the UK labelled as a tax haven. I doubt anyone living near me feels like they're benefitting from an unusually low-tax economy right now!

As FYI...I normally get my stats from here: https://tradingeconomics.com/indicators

Disclaimer: Not associated with the site in any way.

> So basically the others not yourself. Ireland [...]

The EU Commission took Ireland to court (and lost) about their secret sweetheart tax deals with Apple so it appears they are well aware of what happens within their own borders.

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...

> By its decision, the Commission considered that the tax rulings in question constituted State aid unlawfully put into effect by Ireland. The aid was declared incompatible with the internal market. The Commission demanded the recovery of the aid in question. According to the Commission’s calculations, Ireland had granted Apple 13 billion euro in unlawful tax advantages.

> The EU Commission took Ireland to court (and lost) about their secret sweetheart tax deals with Apple

So the EU court found the EU member did nothing wrong.

> so it appears they are well aware of what happens within their own borders.

I don't think the parent was complaining that the EU did not know what goes on within their borders.

Perhaps so, I read it more along the lines of "EU discovered they did not do enough" because the ruling did have an effect; the EU Parliament went ahead with Article 116 against not just Ireland but also Netherlands and Belgium. So they _do_ target and attempt to improve the internal market.

Look at the comment you first replied to though. What are you actually arguing? That US or UK don't understand what goes on, or that you can't find anecdotal instances of them attempting to improve their regulation?

OP in this thread is basically saying that EU should not point fingers toward other nations when they have enough clean-up to do at home. I am arguing that EU, while flawed in its execution of that duty, is actively doing just that. What exactly do you think I am saying?

I think you're exactly implying that this lone anecdote constitutes a good measure by which the EU is "doing more" than the UK or the USA and therefore would not be hypocritical by pointing the finger.

Why do you bring forth this straw man argument?

If that's not what you are implying then what was the point of the comment in the first place?

To give a partial retort of OP:s assertion.

It isn't even a partial retort because no part of the OP's point relies on there being no instances of attempts to improve things. And even if it did then you could take counter-examples for the UK and USA as well.

City of London Corporation, Gibraltar, Jersey, British Virgin Islands, South Dakota... I'm intentionally ignoring honeypots such as Cayman Islands, Delaware, Panama etc.

> The parliament identified the most urgent measures the EU needs to take to close loopholes that currently allow for tax avoidance, money laundering and tax evasion on a massive scale.

This is a very important step to improve Europe economy. The more corrupt is a government the more difficult is for business to thrive. Tax evasion gives an economic advantage to law breakers that cheat instead of competing in an open market to earn that money.

> Two thirds of the shell companies in the Pandora Papers are located in the British Virgin Islands, which has never featured on the EU blacklist and still are not included in the list.

The Pandora Papers are a strong argument to increase vigilance over the activity in such countries. That countries are helping to steal EU citizens money for a part of the loot.

I hope that UK and USA help to stop crime and return citizens what is theirs money.

Do you live in Europe? The last thing we need is more regulation. I can almost guarantee that whatever law they pass is only going to make it harder for those of us actually trying to start up businesses here.

It’s not an either/or situation. We both need more regulation and harmonisation regarding tax evasion and tax dodging both inside and outside the EU and less regulation when it comes to starting businesses.

No we do not. Tax harmonization is being aggressively pushed by certain member states for their own benefit and to the detriment of other, less developed member states.

That’s completely false. The EU budgets itself is extremely favorable to less developed member states even when these states should be excluded from the union like Hungary. The current tax issues favor countries which are already rich like Luxembourg and the Netherlands at the expense of countries which are actually producing values in Europe. It has nothing to do with the eastern countries.

EU cohesion funds and other forms of block-wide handouts are not a substitute for functioning and competitive economies. The ability to compete on taxes is absolutely critical for these small countries to attract business and retain their human capital (which would otherwise just leave for developed western-European countries).

> ability to compete on taxes

To steal from other EU members is no competition it's just unethical. Small countries can live just by cashing a small part of the money that is rightly owned by countries with more population. That needs to be fixed.

Competing for foreign investment is not stealing. What you're implying is that small countries should know their place, not rock the boat too much and above all else, never dare compete with bigger countries...or else. Needless to say, such a stance is antithetical to the very foundations of the European Union. The free movement of capital, labor and goods & services is a whole package - you cannot pick the parts you like and disregard the parts you don't because they're not to your advantage.

That’s a misrepresentation of the situation. Developing EU countries are not currently and can’t compete for foreign investments with the block heavy weights. They have neither the infrastructure nor the human capital to do that. The bigger European countries are the one heavily investing in the developing countries for manufacturing.

Also obviously the EU can put in place any kind of controls it deems necessary on the common market. It’s sovereign in this matter after all and tax dumping is mostly helping foreign-based multinational corporations.

I almost guarantee that you never tried to start a business here in the last ten years.

I used to work for a cloud provider that helped bootstrap business projects, research and start-ups, first in france then in the later years, all over europe.

Do you know how long it took to start a service company in France in 2018? Half a day. And the government own service that help a lot with online identity and paper filling wasn't even online yet, i'm pretty sure that if i want to start a limited company, and make this company employ myself as a freelancer/self-employed (don't know the exact translation), i'd be able to do it in a day.

This is because the speed of starting a company is one of the major metrics in the Doing Business IMF ranking. Not all is rose, though. A large part if the population in France can not start a business because of unsufficient qualifications.

I don't get why a lot of people are claiming that the "EU is butthurt", it's such a narrow minded stance.

What would be the benefit for the EU to enter this shit race with the UK and the US?

Only companies would be the ones benefiting from this with yet another hub with lower taxes. It's a literal shit race if everyone starts playing it, and only works if few play it.

So good for the EU parliament to publicly denounce this and exposing the shit game the UK and US are playing. Basically they're both being cheats in the global economy - and you can't be both a cheat and a role model, that's being a hypocrite.

Are all the EU countries abiding by fair rules? No. But what will be the trend? To have more tax heavens in the EU or to start to purge them? All points to the second option.

> Are all the EU countries abiding by fair rules? No.

Thanks for quickly summarizing why nobody should take EU pronouncements on this seriously

I don't think you understand how the EU works.

Hint: It does not

it does work to some degree though, just look at the new internment camp for political refugees (the new Moria). fully financed by the EU to lock away these evil people behind barbed wire fences.

feels good having your tax money used to keep family with their children under 24/7 surveillance (even inside of their "homes"!), doesnt it?

and there isn't even anything people can really do about it. really lovely.

You really went out of your way to twist what the person above you said. For shame.

What shocks me way more than the rich individuals and family offices having setups allowing them to, legally, pay less taxes is the sheer amount of politicians caught with hidden assets. Assets that were very likely misappropriation of taxpayers money and proceeds from other criminal activities. That and assets from families linked to drug dealing and whatnots.

For example one of the most prominent leftist french politicians, ex- director of the IMF I think, was caught the hand in the cookie jar with tens of millions stashed away, while years ago he was publicly saying that tax evasion should be fought.

We're talking hundreds of politicians.

It's estimated 3% to 5% of the world's GDP is linked to criminal activites: maybe we should the priorities right, and focus on politicians-thieves and drug dealers before hating on those among the rich who legally put their money where they think it's safer? (many in these leaks have done absolutely nothing wrong and it would be nice if everything was not conflated)

Money laundering is illegal. Stealing tax payers money and hiding it is illegal. Selling drugs is illegal. Legally evading taxes is, in many cases, fully legal (tax evasion / tax avoidance: whatever you call it, nothing forces you to pay the most: if you find a legal way to pay less, more power to you as long as you're not a criminal).

> hating on those among the rich who legally put their money where they think it's safer?

That's a highly deceptive way to characterize tax evasion.

London thrives on it. I know so many people who just wink wink nudge nudge allusions to doing things with all sorts of corrupt money here. It’s mostly just shrugged off, either it’s investing in you and you benefit, or you’re facilitating it in a transaction and you benefit, or you’re handling it somehow and take a cut. I honestly don’t know you stop it

Well that’s what Brexit was all really about init

It was happening before 2016 whilst we were in the EU, so not really.

Yup, and there was this little thing of pan european financial regulation coming down the tracks! So yeah

Why should it be stopped? I think most economists would see that as a huge mistake.

Dirty money coming in does not need to be functionally different from clean money. Only thing that matters is what it's spent on. Why should a country refuse "dirty" foreign investment?

>Why should a country refuse "dirty" foreign investment?

Because you are encouraging corruption which is a net loss for everybody apart from the perpetrators and their banks.

Plus it triggers a race to the bottom, ends up becoming a zero sum game for countries, with the perpetrators getting better and better terms.

Why refuse? If the money turns out to be ill-gotten you can just prosecute the owners and seize the money.

“Slavery is fine as long as I don’t see it.”

This has nothing to do with slavery.

Most countries allow you to import products of slave labour, even the US only banned this a few years ago.

Many western countries seem to be okay with slavery they can see too, read the thirteenth amendment of the US constitution for an example.

Memo from your friendly family office in Luxembourg:

--------------------------------------------------------

The secretary of Mr. Alexander Lukashenko called. It seems they are quite interested in discussing new business opportunities. The would like to meet as soon as possible.

It seems he is quite busy, so he suggested to meet in a house of a friend: Ilham Aliyev in London. It seems there are some well know VIPs in the UK that can help facilitate this:

https://newrepublic.com/article/120691/tony-blair-does-pr-re...

Do not forget the call with Mr. Putin on Tuesday morning. He wants to sell his Monaco flat.

PS: We have some old accounts that used to belong to Robert Mugabe but they are a pain to manage. I suggest we close those and take our losses.

--------------------------------------------------------

This doesn't really seem like a convincing counterargument.

These people are criminals who should have their day in court, but I don't understand how that is supposed to justify financial mass surveillance.

Instead of complaining about money laundering, why doesn't the EU send their goons to render Putin & co and put them on trial if they're so bad? (Oh yeah, it's because that's not something they actually want to do)

E: HN throttled my reply to belter so I'll just put it here.

Corrupt oligarchs wasting their money on London real estate still injects money into the economy, and is likely to transfer those "dirty" funds to developers owned by more pleasant people than Lukashenko. Those people will presumably use them for nicer purposes than propping up their dictatorships.

Sorry, but that does not square with your previous comment :-)

"...Only thing that matters is what it's spent on. Why should a country refuse "dirty" foreign investment?..."

> I don't understand how that is supposed to justify financial mass surveillance.

No one's advocating financial mass surveillance - only surveillance of the 1% richest people and corporations.

And this is the rational results of generations of criminality, tax evasion, money laundering, and outright bribery of public officials from this group.

> Why should it be stopped? I think most economists would see that as a huge mistake.

Are you really claiming that most economists think criminality is to be encouraged?

Your stance is morally wrong. Law-abiding people and countries should not be facilitating crimes by laundering their proceeds.

How did you get there from my comment? I never suggested that criminality should be encouraged.

These people should be prosecuted, but financial surveillance isn't the solution. Money laundering isn't the problem, the actual crimes are.

What confuses me every time a topic like this comes up...

Why the heck are there so many people defending tax frauds? It's not as if we are talking about your mom&pops shop here; these are multinational corporations that leverage breakdowns in international tax laws, launder moneys from criminal activities and

They are breaking the law in the worst case and are twisting it beyond recognition in the worst case, using technicalities to give themselves 'Get out of societal obligations" cards. These are anti-social behaviors by nonhuman entities (person hood for legal constructs; what an abomination!) that damage the cohesion and peace in our countries. And yet some people defend these practices, some almost praising these cheats' efforts as nobly defending ... freedom?

What goes? Can anyone explain? I'm thoroughly befuddled.

Isn't it more like Ireland, Dublin specifically?

Ireland is part of the EU, not the UK

I don't think the GP comment implied otherwise, but rather suggested Ireland/Dublin as a response to the UK and the US being named in the title.

That was the point. The US and UK are being called out by the EU while their own member state (Ireland) is doing the same thing.

Ireland shares tax information, unlike the british former colonies, the US included.

Ireland is used for tax _avoidance_. As problematic as that is, I don't believe we have a particular problem with money laundering or [illegal] tax evasion. On the other hand, English financial institutions (particularly in the City of London which has different legal jurisdiction from the rest of the UK) is well known to turn a blind eye to multiple billions of dirty money flowing through it.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/irish-ban...

> Ireland is used for tax _avoidance_. As problematic as that is, I don't believe we have a particular problem with money laundering or [illegal] tax evasion. On the other hand, English financial institutions (particularly in the City of London which has different legal jurisdiction from the rest of the UK) is well known to turn a blind eye to multiple billions of dirty money flowing through it.

How many years out of the ~50 that the UK was a member of the EU (or predecessors) was this fact well known to the EU?

https://european-pirateparty.eu/european-parliament-stays-no...

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sed/doc/news/flash/23845/P9_P... votes

Money laundering and tax evasion must obviously sometimes happen in gigantic financial hubs like London and New York. What the EU is upset about is their failure to supplant either of those hubs with Paris or Frankfurt.

>What the EU is upset about is their failure to supplant either of those hubs with Paris or Frankfurt.

What makes you say this?

I watch a documentary called “Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire” which is about the UK’s tax havens - and talks a bit about the US too.

Didn’t know how much of it to believe but I get the feeling quite a bit of it is probably true.

We could call them hubs for money laundering and tax evasion, or we could try to use more neutral terminology and simply refer to them as "privacy hubs" or something similar, no? Not that the UK would be a particularly great example of such with the introduction of the UWO.

It's hilarious how many people pretend to support a right to privacy until it's about other people's money. Always gotta drag down instead of rise above.

Privacy is not a free pass to commit crimes especially if privacy is only for the wealthy.

Where'd you get that idea? I doubt anyone believes that. Nobody is arguing for free passes for criminals.

A couple of people breaking the law is no excuse for financial mass surveillance (or any other kind of mass surveillance). Arguing against mass surveillance is not the same as arguing for free passes, no matter how you might like to twist it.

UWO?

Unexplained Wealth Order. If you don't want to tell where your assets are from, the government can keep them.

ah, nice. another reverse order law.

Maybe soon we will finally go back to the Star Chamber days, can't wait. /s

Guess the euros are running out of legislation to recoup tax via fines.

This doesn't mean a thing. Pure entropy. It's amazing how powerless EU Parliament really is AND how people don't get how powerless it really is.

Tax avoidance by Ireland and Lux is 100x the problem of British Virgin Islands.

If the EU just literally taxed big corps with normal terms, it would make a big difference.

All wealthy countries have corruption, poor countries even more so but nobody cares.

It seems likely that richer countries have more corruption by value. As to the number of people involved it would be interesting to know, but difficult to ascertain.

Stop charging and you won't have problems with tax evasion.

Decriminalise drugs and criminals will lose most of their revenue.

>Decriminalise drugs and criminals will lose most of their revenue.

They are already into ransomware anyway.

And maybe decriminalize human trafficking too?

All problems solved right?

That's a really poor analogy. Decriminalizing drugs will not mean that somebody will have a right to give you drugs. Human trafficking involves abusing other people.

It will mean that an incredible amount of money spent on policing can be used on education of what drugs are and what they do to you. The people that have a job to police the lives of others are scared of this because they will be without a job. As their job is basically not needed they are scared of losing their welfare and privilege.

>Decriminalizing drugs will not mean that somebody will have a right to give you drugs.

Then nobody will loose any revenue right? Because that was the parent's argument.

>It will mean that an incredible amount of money spent on policing can be used on education of what drugs are and what they do to you

Ah yes the education argument...it never works, you cannot throw money at such a problem.

I don't understand the revenue argument and I've read all the comments.

Sure it works. Look at Holland, does it have a substantially higher or even a higher incidence of drug use than e.g. neighboring countries? I don't think so. Look at Portugal, a country that reduced drug abuse through decriminalization. That's just a fact.

It's a complex issue and there might be cases where it doesn't work, but to say it never works is clearly wrong. If we talk about a democratic society, then it can't rely on brute force for the people's own good, at least not for an extended period of time. A ban would be OK early on, but eventually people need to know themselves what's wrong and crucially why. This goes beyond drug use and is basically the only way to have a democratic society.

As it is, the ban on drugs is mostly a tool of oppression. Especially in countries like the US, that is financing a predominantly white police force to, well, police and subject minorities to a different standard than the majority.

> I don't understand the revenue argument and I've read all the comments.

Look at the top-comment, you have obviously NOT read all the comments:

>>Decriminalise drugs and criminals will lose most of their revenue.

>Sure it works. Look at Holland, does it have a substantially higher or even a higher incidence of drug use than e.g. neighboring countries? I don't think so.

Yeah look how good it works:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBva8anWQBk1Ptr?format=jpg&name=...

>Cheese, Cocaine and Killers: how holland became a mafia paradise through lax drug policies.

It's from this month.

Another?

https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2020/01/netherlands-nar...

And here some taste of reality:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/netherlands-belgium-switzerl...

>Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland tops in drug use in Europe

One of European drug trafficking hubs is also Montenegro, a small country with traditionally extremely strict drug laws. So there's not even a lot of correlation in what you say, let alone causation.

Whataboutism in it's purest form...bravo well done.

Comparing Montenegro (the poorest country in europe and second most corrupt one (just Albania is worse)) to holland need some massive stretch (shame on you)...and it's beyond truthful argumentation. Just read the Spiegel...and why Holland is a paradise for the Mafia.

If you point out that lax laws are the cause for something, then it's really easy to disapprove that by pointing out all the counter examples. It's really simple. Have a nice day.

What is the problem exactly?

That people get addicted, which is a mental illness, or they use substances you personally don't approve off?

Caffeine would never be a non-prescription medication had it been invented today.

>What is the problem exactly?

Making money by making people ill?

>substances you personally don't approve off?

Do you approve the use of Crack?

>Caffeine would never be a non-prescription medication had it been invented today.

BS, again and again its proofed that normal amounts of Coffee/Tee is a healthy thing.

> And maybe decriminalize human trafficking too?

The difference between the drug trade and human trafficking is that it may be argued that the former does not involve harm of others. The latter could never support such an argument.

>is that it may be argued that the former does not involve harm of others.

You can ask afghan puppy farmers about that, and every single crack/heroin user if it's not harm-full, just decriminalize it, solves a really minor problem.

You can see it with prostitution, it's legal in most of Europe, however it's still in the hand organized crime groups, nothing has changed.

> You can see it with prostitution, it's legal in most of Europe, however it's still in the hand organized crime groups, nothing has changed

It's slightly less bad for sex workers, since their activity not being a crime means they can theoretically go to the police, which is better than nothing.

>It's slightly less bad for sex workers,

True, at least sex workers can go to the police if something happens, but as i wrote in another comment, it solves a ~minor problem and is not the to-go-and-solve-everything-solution.

The point was the huge difference between what may be argued (successfully) about something and what could not be argued about something (because it's clearly impossible to be successfully argued). That the mays are contentious is implied by the may, but it is possible to put one's weight behind it.

Proposing arguments against it won't change that.

And EU is a hub of excessive taxation

At least I get what I pay for here.

Yes a Airport in Berlin and a Bus-station that is 15x more expensive then predicted from 3m to 43m. ;)

Brussels being butthurt that they aren't the hub for money laundering and tax evasion.

I'm sure a lot of MEPs themselves are no different from their MP and Congressmen counterparts.

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