Brussels, 13/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 16 November, the coordinators of the political groups at the European Parliament will decide whether or not to extend the term of the EP's special TAXE committee. The Greens/EFA, GUE/NGL and ALDE issued a joint press release on Friday stating that they are joining forces in favour of an extension. If the decision to extend the term is backed by the coordinators, then it would be for the groups' presidents to validate the decision at their meeting on Thursday 19 November.
The three political groups say that the special committee has not fulfilled its mandate due to the “lack of access to crucial documents and lack of full cooperation from EU governments, the Commission and multinationals,” explain German MEPs Michael Theurer (ALDE), Sven Giegold (Greens//FFA) and Fabio De Masi (GUE/NGL). They want to establish political responsibility for the years of fiscal dumping and the role played by the current president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the head of Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, in their role as former prime minister of Luxembourg and current finance minister of the Netherlands.
The three MEPs note the participation of the president of the S&D group, Italy's Gianni Pittella, in a policy article published in The Guardian in which several academic and political figureheads call on EU governments to learn from the Luxleaks scandal and take action against corporate tax avoidance. Pittella has therefore been invited by the three groups to support extension of the mandate of the special TAXE committee, as outlined in Fabio De Masi's open letter to him on Friday 13 November.
On Monday, the TAXE committee will hold a hearing of representatives of Google, Facebook, Amazon, HSBC, Barclays, Philip Morris, Ikea, Coca Cola, Walt Disney, McDonald's and Anheuser-Bush InBev. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)