TAX POLICY AND FISCAL COMPETITION
                     IN THE EUROPEAN UNION


      Associate Professor PhD Marilen Pirtea, E-mail: marilen.pirtea@fse.uvt.ro
                              Phd student Marius Miloş,
                            PhD student Laura Raisa Iovu
                        West University Of Timisoara, Romania


       Abstract: Thus tax competition and harmonization efforts should set up a common
and necessarily harmonized framework of a European tax system, there are pressing
needs to promote the economic growth and welfare by increasing fiscal fairness.
       Considering all this aspects, it is necessarily to analyze the tax policy in the
European Union’s countries, to see differences, evolutions and competition problems that
may hinder economic integration. However the analyze focuses on the old countries of
the European Union and also on the group of countries which entered European Union
in may 2004. The conclusions and further analyses could also involve Romania and
Bulgaria which have recently joined the Union and which have to harmonize taxes
according to the European practices.

       Keywords: tax competition, tax harmonization, tax system

       JEL codes: F36, H21