One for the road
Despite their governments’ insistence that higher taxes on booze prevent binge drinking, when it comes to alcohol, Swedish and Finnish consumers are voting with their feet. They take a ferry south to Germany or to Estonia where beer is not only cheaper but also easier to get. Beer tax distortions around the Baltic Sea give Northern brewers a real headache as personal and illegal imports seriously endanger their business.
It must be one of history’s ironies - the philosopher Adam Smith, I imagine, would have described it as an unintended consequence of human action - that Scandinavian consumers, who have been among the fiercest Eurosceptics now take full advantage of the EU’s single market which has swept away internal fiscal frontiers and increased personal imports of alcohol..
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