A Fundamental Right to Tax Enforcement? A response to Prof. Capaldo

Summary, in English

In a previous entry, Prof. Capaldo criticised the judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU in Taricco II by arguing that there exists, in international law (or what the author calls ‘global law’), a fundamental human right to policies that criminalise tax fraud. According to the author, the Court presented in its judgment a false dichotomy between the need to ensure the effective application of EU law and the need to ensure the protection of constitutionally guaranteed rights of the accused. This is because the effective application of EU law also entails the protection of ‘social human rights’, presumably by the proper use of the taxes for public expenditure. In this blog entry I argue that Prof. Capaldo’s argument presupposes a particular understanding of human rights, and that this understanding of human rights is problematic from the perspective of democratic theory.

• Author: Eduardo Gill-Pedro
• Department/s: Department of Law
• Publishing year: 2017-12-13
• Language: English
• Links: http://europeanlawblog.eu/2017/12/13/a-fundamental-right-to-tax-enforcement-a-response-to-prof-capaldo/
• Document type: Web publication
• Topic: Law
• Keywords: EU law; Financial law; EU-rätt; Finansrätt
• Status: Published