Brussels, 15/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - The conference of the presidents of the political groups of the European Parliament has postponed until Thursday 5 February the decision to put before the February plenary session of the EP the proposal by the Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups to set up a committee of enquiry to shed light on tax avoidance and tax evasion, following the revelations of the LuxLeaks affair (see EUROPE 11230).
We now have “three weeks to negotiate something consensual” with the EPP, S&D and ALDE groups of the grand coalition, Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium) told EUROPE, stressing the need to gather “a large majority” at the EP to uphold the legitimacy of the procedure undertaken. The negotiations underway focus on the mandate and composition of the future committee of enquiry and on the fate of the two own-initiative reports which the 'economic and monetary affairs' committee has been tasked with drafting on the issue.
As regards the timetable, the Belgian Green takes the view that the work of the committee of enquiry could take until “mid-2016”. This amount of time would allow for an in-depth investigation and specific recommendations on how to limit harmful tax practices at European level, in view of the fact that the European Commission will have made concrete proposals in the meantime to bring in an automatic exchange of information within the EU on tax rulings (see EUROPE 11228). Lamberts hopes to “avoid the witchhunt” which could materialise if the investigation looked only at practices in Luxembourg when it was led by the Christian Democrat Jean-Claude Juncker, who is currently the President of the Commission. He said that in one way or another, all of the political families have been involved in setting up legal tax practices which allow multinational companies to avoid taxation.
A document provided by Lamberts gives a breakdown by political group of the signatures of the MEPs in favour of creating a committee of enquiry. Only 9% of the EPP members, 15% of the MEPs of the ECR and S&D groups and 18% of ALDE members back the initiative. (MB)