United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 Assignment

United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 - Assignment Example The policies have the objective to prevent against the dangerous consequences, which are leading to climatic changes. Climate treaty was made in 1997 addressing the harmful effects of the carbon emission in the climate, which is known as the Kyoto Protocol (Vidal et al., 2009). The treaty was however unapproved by the major economic countries including the United States. It helped the developed countries but the developing countries were not at all happy with the treaty. The developing countries like China and India also opposed to this treaty as 50% reduction in emission will wreck their economy. The nations looked forward for an agreement which will help them to develop their economy and also prevent the harmful effects of emission (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2009). The United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Copenhagen, Denmark from 7th December to 19th December, 2009. It was the conference which included 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 1 5) to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC) and the fifth meeting to the Kyoto Protocol. It is basically the continuation of Kyoto Protocol. It marked the conclusion of the two years negotiating process, which enhanced the international climate change collaboration between the countries. More than 115 world leaders attended the conference along with 40,000 people who are the advisors or the governmental or the non-governmental organizations (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2009). The conference took place with the aim of addressing the adverse effects of the climatic change that is taking place with the emission of the carbon and green house gases. The developing countries hoped that the Copenhagen Conference will make a fair deal for them by settling the issue of the dangerous climatic changes. But the conference went through a lot of controversies for a week as the developing countries like China and India pointed out that the conferenc e has not been transparent to them. Lot of decisions was made prior to the summit and that news infuriated China. The leakage of the news that European Union has agreed to cut down carbon emission about 50% along with other developed countries. They have completed industrialization so they can afford to cut the emission to that extent. But the developing countries like China, India, etc cannot afford to reduce the emission to that extent because that will bring an end to their economic development. China in alliance with India said that the Copenhagen Conference was held only to make a show off by the European Nations after Kyoto Protocol was opposed by all the developing countries. They even pointed out the fact that the conference aimed at creating a pressure on the developing countries as all the decisions are made before the conference only. United Kingdom (UK) which is the member state of European Union had experienced increase in the carbon emission till 1990 basically due to the extensive manufacture of the short term consumer goods. But with the initiation of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the government of UK was forced to reduce the emission by 50%. As UK has been a developed country it did not face that much problem in reducing to that extent. In 2009, when the Copenhagen Conference was held they have their own set of mission and vision before coming to the conference which are given below (Anup, 2009). a) Mission of United Kingdom

Tax competition V Tax Harmonization in an enlarged European Union Research Proposal

Tax competition V Tax Harmonization in an enlarged European Union - Research Proposal Example Some people believe tax harmonization creates unity and a level playing field, some believe its stifles competition and creates a socialist economic bloc. In this thesis I will examine both sides of the argument by looking at how the debate and policy has evolved over the years with a specific focus on how tax harmonization affects multinational corporations—whether it encourages them to invest in the EU or to pull out. Part of the basis of the European arrangement was the centralization of monetary policy. This was a huge amount of sovereignty for individual countries to give up. The assumption underlying this ceding of power by national governments really is that all economies within the European Union are created equally and the same measures for each economy are the appropriate way forward. This itself was controversial enough, but at the time left the national governments to at least set their own tax rates and compete for business by having differing corporate tax rates. This idea too soon bit the dust. Countries like France and Italy with high corporate tax rates were jealous that a country such as Ireland with a low tax rate was able to drum up so much business. They began to push for a single minimum rate across the whole of the EU. For high tax countries this levelled the playing field, but forcing more competitive countries to become less so—for low tax countries—often with much smaller economies to begin with—they had to punish companies that had come to them in the first place seeking a safe haven for investment. The simple knee-jerk logic is this: As factor mobility increases within the EU, pressure will be placed on member states to lower their tax rates on mobile factors in order to attract business. This unchecked competition will lead to a race to the bottom in which tax rates will dip so low as to threaten countries abilities to supply public goods. In response, one might argue for the necessity of strict