Britain and Ireland, meanwhile, are leading the battle against any hint of tax harmonisation.
"This report is not about harmonisation or about taking the spirit of competition out of sport".
Second, the UK wanted the area of "maximum harmonisation" to become subject to unanimity.
So a genuine harmonisation of asylum policies will have to wait for another day.
But while EU leaders love harmonisation in theory, in practice progress has been very sticky.
Some countries are now trying to get round these problems by harmonisation or mutual recognition of standards.
Although it can create confusion, the Internet may actually bring about greater harmonisation of international drug standards.
For example, harmonisation of India's cascading sales taxes by introducing a uniform national value-added tax has repeatedly been postponed.
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The IASB and the IFAC signed an agreement in November to encourage harmonisation between public- and private-sector accounting standards.
For the same reason, legal firms and translators have also fought against harmonisation.
In Britain they are accused of over-regulation, manic harmonisation and addiction to subsidies.
The French want to concoct a euro-zone block, with a direct line to the European Central Bank and fiscal harmonisation.
And a dramatic act of harmonisation is due to begin next year, when 11 countries will adopt the same currency.
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Even so, harmonisation and recognition agreements can both create and divert trade.
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Mr Lafontaine has shown as much in the case of tax harmonisation.
Yet many of Europe's politicians seek harmonisation as an end in itself.
Blair had appealed to the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt not to talk up the issue of tax harmonisation ahead of his election.
The Commissioner with responsibility for VAT reform, Algirdas Semeta said there needed to be increased harmonisation of VAT laws to tackle cross-border fraud.
It said it would "welcome greater harmonisation of training" with Merseyside Police, but added the Tunnel Police were "an important and highly dedicated organisation".
At a time when the European Union is still pressing Britain for tax harmonisation, gambling is a rare reminder of the benefits of tax competition.
EU-wide tax harmonisation and posited that free markets should be tamed.
Such harmonisation is most likely in areas of interest to big multinational corporations (copyright) or where the interests of countries are closely aligned (crime and taxation).
There was some traditional squabbling, mainly over savings-tax harmonisation (blocked by Britain) and British beef (blocked by France), but all this was less than usually distracting.
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Charlotte Powell, a London-based barrister and chair of the Extradition Lawyers' Association, notes that the desire to harmonise procedural rules has outstripped the harmonisation of substantive elements.
Take the latest German-French missive, on December 7th: it speaks of euro-zone action on financial regulation, labour markets, a financial-transactions tax and the harmonisation of the corporate-tax base.
Where ecological phenomena outlast the political lifetime of decision makers, where the frontiers of Nations are no longer barriers, the principles of harmonisation and inter-governmental collaboration take on their full value.
But Mr de Silguy has run foul of fellow commissioners who argue that partial harmonisation of taxes could, by threatening to undermine the single market, be worse than none at all.
Euro-11 might discuss such large issues as tax harmonisation, common wage policies, even a common approach to social policies, such as the preservation of what is known as Europe's social model.
Such competition must be curbed with restrictions on labour migration from eastern Europe, subsidies for rich-country production and lots of harmonisation including that old dream of the left, a European minimum wage.
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Significantly their announcement came in the same week as the proposal by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for other integrationist measures, including a beefed up European Parliament, an elected commission and tax harmonisation.
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