Hunting for funds: Swiss Defence Minister Martin Pfister.
Keystone-SDA
The government’s proposed VAT increase to finance defence spending has been rather poorly received in a consultation process which ended on Saturday. Almost all political parties are critical of the idea.
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Only the Centre Party is unreservedly behind the government’s plans to increase VAT by 0.8 percentage points for a limited period of ten years to finance army spending.
The centre-right Radical-Liberal Party, for its part, is in favour of a fund to finance the army’s defence spending; however, it rejects “in no uncertain terms” the idea of doing this by increasing VAT.
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The right-wing People’s Party is also against the VAT increase and wants to reallocate funds instead, while the Liberal Greens want to make less money available. The Greens don’t want any increase in the army budget at all.
The left-wing Social Democrats are also against the VAT increase and are calling for other options.
Adapted from German by AI/dos
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