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Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base

But that was always the danger with article 5 and the subsidiarity clause. There are some very general objectives set out in the treaties, and subsidiarity is one of those catch-all arrangements that can justify stretching the meaning of other articles, as we have already seen. How does the European Union justify the bail-out mechanism that the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer approved under article 122 of the Lisbon treaty, which was designed for natural disasters? How can a crisis in the euro possibly be classified as a natural disaster? The mechanism has, however, been allowed to go through by default. The arrangement before us is another that will go through by default if we do not challenge it. Indeed, article 26 of the draft directive, the penultimate paragraph of the preamble, states:"““The objective of this Directive cannot be sufficiently achieved through individual action undertaken by the Member States because of the lack of coordination among national tax systems.””" It goes on to justify the objective as being"““in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity””—" and in its own terms that is very difficult to argue with. I appreciate the European Scrutiny Committee's points about the direct legal base, but the European Union is going for an indirect legal base. That demonstrates that subsidiarity was always a deceit. It was always something that could be a centralising, as opposed to a decentralising, concept, and if we rest our case against the proposal purely on the principle of subsidiarity we will allow the EU, rather than what we want ourselves, to determine what is imposed upon this country. If we rest our case against this proposal purely on the principle of subsidiarity, we are allowing the European Union to decide what shall be imposed on this country rather than deciding what we want for ourselves.