The European Commission estimates the next EU budget could benefit from almost €11bn in additional yearly revenues from new taxes on digital services, gambling and crypto assets, according to a document shared with EU member states and seen by Euronews.
The taxation proposals are being discussed as part of negotiations over the next EU long-term budget for the period 2028-2034.
The Commission’s proposal already included several new taxes, known as “own resources”, but most of those proposals faced significant opposition from EU member states, which must adopt the budget unanimously. In April, the European Parliament passed a resolution with additional taxation proposals targeting digital services, gambling and crypto assets.
Earlier this week, European Commissioner for the Budget Piotr Serafin told member states that progress on own resources is needed if “we want an ambitious budget”.
According to several diplomatic sources, some of those suggestions have garnered preliminary support from certain EU members, in particular the online gambling tax.
On Thursday, the Commission shared an early estimate of how much each of these new taxes could yield for the EU budget. The figures are likely to be underestimates, as they are based on 2025 prices.
Online gambling tax
Using sector data, the Commission estimated that a 3 percent levy on the net turnover of the online gambling sector could generate around €1.9bn per year on average for the period 2028-2034.
The estimate is based on several assumptions, including that the industry’s growth would track the broader economy. The Commission paper notes, however, that there is no common definition of gambling, nor a harmonised approach to its taxation, across the EU.
The levy could be based on online operators’ margins or revenues from gambling activities, or charged indirectly to players – for example, proportionally to the intensity of their gaming activity.
The online gambling tax has so far attracted the most support among EU governments, but is set to face fierce opposition from Malta, the country where most betting websites are based.
Digital levy
For a digital tax, the Commission calculated the EU could receive approximately €5bn annually, based on 2024 revenues from Spain, France and Italy, all of which already levy a tax on digital services.
The EU executive acknowledges that the design would strongly affect the actual revenue stream, including which activities should be taxed and whether a specific revenue threshold should trigger the levy.
The calculation assumes a 3 percent tax rate on net turnover from digital advertising, intermediation and the monetisation of user data, for companies exceeding both a national turnover threshold for digital activities and a global group turnover threshold of €750m.
The Commission noted that both the online gambling tax and the digital levy would, in theory, cover the same companies targeted by the corporate tax included in its original proposal.
That proposal – a corporate tax for Europe, or CORE – has faced significant resistance from EU member states, particularly those generally opposed to expanding corporate taxation.
Crypto assets
The most uncertain estimate in the document concerns crypto assets, owing largely to the high volatility of the crypto market and the difficulty in determining user location for the EU countries responsible for collecting the tax.
Two possible designs are envisaged: either a levy on the overall volume of transactions by users over a given timeframe, or a tax on capital gains from crypto assets, which would replace or supplement existing capital gains schemes.
“For a crypto transaction tax, the estimate for 2025, using a rough market research approximation of EU accounts and assuming a tax rate of 0.1 percent on the value of transactions, would yield approximately between €3 and 4 billion in annual revenue for the EU budget,” the document seen by Euronews reads.
The estimate for a crypto capital gains tax is more conservative – and based on older data from a 2022 report – in the range of €1bn to €2.4bn.
What’s at stake
The EU is negotiating its seven-year budget for the period 2028-2034, which will set its long-term political priorities and spending capacity.
Negotiations began in July 2025, when the European Commission published its €2 trillion budget proposal, which includes significant departures from the current framework.
The Commission has outlined three main spending priorities: the Competitiveness fund, Global Europe, and Horizon funds.
The most significant structural novelty concerns how regional, agriculture and fisheries funds will be distributed: the Commission proposed replacing the existing system with National and Regional Partnership Plans tailored to each member state.
The budget also sets aside funds for repaying Next Generation EU, the common borrowing instrument approved in 2020 to cushion the economic blow of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A deal is expected by the end of 2026, though some capitals have not ruled out a delay. Member states are expected to have a first overall compromise text by the first half of June.