Brussels, 12/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 12 February, the European Parliament approved the creation of a special committee on tax rulings, by 612 votes in favour, 19 against and 23 abstentions. The term of the mandate will be six months and the special committee will be made up of 45 members, all from the committee on economic and financial affairs (ECON) of the European Parliament (13 members from the EPP, 12 S&D, 4 ECR, 4 ALDE, 3 GUE/NGL, 3 Greens/EFA, 3 EFDD, 3 unaffiliated).
Alain Lamassoure (France, EPP) is expected to be tasked with chairing this committee. The names mentioned most frequently for the two co-rapporteurs (amendment by Germany's Burkhard Balz, EPP) are those of Michael Theurer (ALDE, Germany) and Elisa Ferreira (S&D, Portugal).
This “committee's mission will be to shed light on the tax practices of all the member states, not just Luxembourg, and to make concrete proposals to put an end to abuses and to propose ways of standardising corporate taxation”, explained Philippe Juvin (EPP, France).
“While it is unfortunate that the Parliament will not be using its most powerful investigative instrument, a special committee is a second-best option”, said the co-president of the Greens/EFA group, Belgium's Philippe Lamberts, in a press release. He also took the floor at the plenary session ahead of the vote, speaking out against the fact that the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, had “decided on his own authority not to put the proposal to the vote”, even if this proposal were accompanied by negative recommendation, for a committee of enquiry for which the group had gathered the required number of signatures. “We feel that this is against European law and we reserve the right to bring the matter before the CJEU”, the Belgian MEP continued. The committee of investigation will aim to determine whether the tax rulings, abuses of which were revealed by LuxLeaks, are compatible with European laws on state aid and EU tax legislation.
The mandate voted through is the one initially proposed by the Greens/EFA group for a committee of enquiry. The special committee will be responsible, amongst other things, for determining whether the states are complying with the principle of fair cooperation and whether the Commission is properly verifying that all states are complying with the obligation to practice the automatic exchange of information on tax rulings in line with the directive on administrative cooperation. The MEPs will also analyse and verify whether the Commission is making use of all of its competences in terms of controls on state aid.
Under an amendment tabled by Philippe Lamberts and adopted in plenary, the special committee will analyse and measure the impacts in third countries of aggressive tax planning practised by businesses located or incorporated in the member states, and exchanges of information with third countries in this matter. (Elodie Lamer)