Just at a time when especially low-income earners can have simpler access to many products because of the internet, it seems cruel to restrict their purchasing power.If people such as Bruno Le Maire want to talk about fairness, then they should first address the unfair situation of those people who cannot support indirect tax increases. If we care about those with low wages, we need a more competitive marketplace in which companies are in a price race, not a race to optimise astronomical tax burdens.

Meanwhile, German finance minister Olaf Scholz is now known to be deliberately delaying the progress of the tax. A confidential document from the German Federal Ministry of Finance, which is quoted by the German newspaper BILD, condemns the “demonisation of the large internet companies”. This has supporters of the tax up in arms, because of course, opposing an idea that they just came up with a year ago must mean that a person is owned by big digital.

Scholz is not even delaying it to avoid because he disagrees with it on principle, as his social democrat party affiliation would probably suggest, but more by pragmatic considerations. German carmakers could suffer from retaliatory tariffs from the U.S, if president Trump were to see the tax as an attempt to increase the level of European protectionism. After all, EU leaders are constantly using the fact that there is no European Google, Apple, or Facebook, continuously in their statements.

It is unlikely at this point that any agreement can be reached until the European elections in May, and that is also thanks to the delays be minister Scholz. The future of Europe’s market economy undeniably lies in the digital sector. The idea of attempting to massively tax online businesses is not a promising objective, neither for the states nor their consumers. It belongs in the dustbin of creative political EU integration.