Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

It has been suggested, as a way of getting around the inflexibility inherent in the common, consolidated corporate tax base proposition, that some decisions would be made in committees by qualified majority voting and that there might be some co-ordinating tax authority across the EU. We believe those would be ineffective mechanisms in terms of policy flexibility which would further erode national choices. The real antidote to tax policy inflexibility is to retain national discretion.

See this speech in context