Mirroring comparative fiscal federalism to design the EU revenue side

This contribution aims to incorporate comparative fiscal federalism into the design of the EU revenue side. The author concludes that there has been no such ‘Hamiltonian moment’ at the EU after the introduction of the Next Generation Economic Recovery Program (NGEU) and the own resources scheduled in the EU Own Resources Decision (ORD) for the period 2021–2027. The ORD follows a short-term vision needed to pay back the massive debts incurred due to the NGEU without fully endorsing a fiscal federalism route. Learning how the revenue side is structured in decentralized countries could offer important proxies to be applied at the EU level, a centripetal or ‘bottom-up federation’. Federalizing the EU revenue side would imply an explicit recognition of the EU’s power to create income/indirect taxes coupled with the need to provide public goods to European citizens.