While our Brussels-based friends have had quite a few useful ideas over the last years, sometimes, their plans are nothing short of hilarious and/or batshit crazy. After trying to regulate the usage of the term “marmalade” in Austria and Germany, their latest insanity is a high tax on certain types of cell phones.
According to Reuters, their plan is as follows:
The European Commission last week sent to member states a formal proposal to reclassify some phones as “multi-functional devices”, which would trigger a 14-percent tax on phones with TV receivers and 3.7 percent on navigation-enabled phones.
I have no idea where this sudden change of policy comes from (and why it targets mobile TV in specific). So far, the EU has had a rather innovation-friendly stance – for example, their recent forced lowering of roaming tariffs.
I can only hope that this idea gets killed off quickly due to overwhelming public resistance – unfortunately, I fear that the chances are rather bad. If the EU disregards its inhabitants opinions on issues as important as the Lisbon treaty, why, for heavens sake, should they care about the opinions of the mobile computing economy…
Image: Wikimedia Commons / Lars Aronsson
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