Brussels, 08/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - A number of MEPs of the special committee on tax rulings of the European Parliament, including its rapporteurs, have reached the limits of their work, due to a lack of cooperation on the part of the stakeholders.
On Monday 7 September, many speakers congratulated Portugal's Elisa Ferreira (S&D) and Germany's Michael Theurer on their draft report, which currently seems to be consensual (see EUROPE 11365). However, they have had to work round the flat refusal of a number of multinationals to come before the EP committee, among them IKEA of Sweden, which Theurer criticised for its refusal to cooperate and its repeated invitations to the MEPs regarding other dossiers. For her part, Ferreira referred to the letter of the Taxation Commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, who explained to them at the end of August that the member states did not want information regarding them to be submitted to the EP for reasons of confidentiality. “Many questions remain unanswered”, Theurer added. He explained that it would be of “vital importance to hold discussions with the finance ministers” of the EU member states, so that they could explain to the MEPs “where their difficulties lay” on individual tax dossiers.
Commissioner Moscovici himself is unimpressed with the negotiations at the Council on his proposal for the automatic exchange of information on tax rulings (see EUROPE 11380). The number of observers expect the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, to bring pressure to bear on the states himself this Wednesday, in his State of the Union address.
The shadow rapporteur, Danish ECR group member Morten Messerschmidt, reiterated the fact that the states have sole competency in taxation matters and declared that his group would not support the report if it called into question unanimous decision-making in this area at the Council (paragraph 117). (Elodie Lamer)