In Europe, an asset bequeathed to the rich is making its way “through popular acclaim,” to “finance climate and social transformation and help victim countries of climate deregulation.” So write the promoters of the “Tax the Rich” petition, a group of signatures behind which are different personalities, from the neo-Marxist economist Thomas Piketty to the head of the Belgian Socialist Party Paul Magnet to the global coordinator of the Progressive Alliance Connie Reuter to the French MP Aurore Laloc, from the Socialist Group, to the former European Commissioner Laszlo Andor (hence the Hungarian Socialist Party of PSE) and NGOs such as Oxfam. Technically, it is the European Citizens’ Initiative (ICE), an institution created in 2012 and envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty on the basis of which citizens “who have managed to collect at least one million signatures from at least seven member states have the right to request the European Commission to propose or amend a European law “.

The first step is the proposal, the second is the registration of the proposal by the European Commission, and the third is to collect one million signatures within one year of the registration of the popular initiative. What’s new with regard to the superlative inheritance petition is that Brussels decided to officially register it on July 11th. A statement from the EU Commission explains the decision, “It is of a legal nature and does not prejudge the Commission’s final legal and political conclusions on this initiative and any action it intends to take, should the initiative gain the necessary support.” But if the petition gets the necessary signatures, “the commission will have to respond,” we read. To date, the EU Commission has received 127 proposals and registered 102, of which 8 have already been converted into official documents (the latter relates to a ban on marketing shark fin).

On the other hand, the wealthy tax petition opens the door: a large wealth tax is already on the political platforms of several European left-wing parties, including Elie Schlein’s Democratic Party, which has put it at the top of its economic reform plan. Major leaders of the left and far left can share the message of the wealthy tax promoters. In fact, in explaining the goals of collecting signatures, they write that “inequality has continually grown, so much so that the richest 1% of the world’s population own nearly half of the global wealth and the same 1% emit more carbon dioxide than the poorer half of the planet.”, While European economic and social policies have failed. Thus, “it is necessary to radically reorient the European Union towards a just and democratic climate transition”, and this must be done through a “tax on large wealth”, through a specific European directive. The proceeds of this new tax on real estate The big one “should be dedicated to a just ecological and social transition, feeding into the policies of the Union and Member States devoted to this purpose”. The proposal has already been signed by more than 130 MEPs. They wrote, referring to a global minimum tax of 15% for multinational companies. Which is expected to come into force this year: “What we have been able to achieve for multinationals, we must now do for the rich.” But how rich is it? by the European Union. One hypothesis is 1.5% per annum on assets over 50 million, but it would be a very limited elite. The threshold could be lower. In Italy, the Parliamentary Left has proposed an estate with progressive rates starting from assets of €500,000.