Measures
The plan includes a broad range of actions at national level and at EU level to help households and industrial firms (particularly automobile and construction).
The measures include:
- reflation: the Commission will allow Member States to break the Stability and Growth Pact for two or three years.
- incentives to investment: the plan outlines measures to encourage the fight against climate change and promotes strategic investments in buildings and energy efficient technologies.
- lower rates: the ECB is invited to drop its rates.
- tax rebates: lowering taxation on green technology and eco-friendly cars, accompanied by scrappage programs
- social measures: the Commission proposed the governments to temporarily increase unemployment benefits and their duration, to increase allowances to households, to lower taxes on low incomes, to lower social security contributions paid on low wages by employers, to reduce labour costs paid by employees with low incomes, to provide subsidised loans or credit guarantees for companies, to reduce temporarily the VAT rate to support consumption. The Commission announced it would adopt by mid-March 2009 a proposal to lower VAT rates for services with high labour-intensiveness (such as catering).
Read more about this topic: 2008 European Union Stimulus Plan
Famous quotes containing the word measures:
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Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and
strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off
work,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Away with the cant of “Measures, not men!”Mthe idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.”
—George Canning (1770–1827)
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Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
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—John Milton (1608–1674)