Brussels, 19/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - The conference of presidents of the European Parliament groups has postponed its decision on the possibility of extending the mandate of the special TAXE committee on tax rulings of the European Parliament until Thursday 26 November, after the plenary vote on this committee's report. The S&D Group requested this proposal. A source from the group explained that they wanted to allow the report be adopted so that it was not relegated to the rank of interim report.
The request took the Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups by surprise. The co-president of the Greens/EFA Froup at the Parliament, Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts, explained that the rules of the Parliament stipulate that “a special committee ends when its final report is voted on, which will be on Wednesday 25 November in plenary”. This means that the next day's conference of the presidents “will not be able to extend a defunct special committee”. Lamberts feels that this “manoeuvre” is therefore aimed at reviewing the mandate of the TAXE committee. Incidentally, the S&D says that it is in favour of continuing the work and the EPP Group no longer opposes this. The shadow rapporteur for the GUE/NGL Group in the TAXE committee, Fabio De Masi, accused the EPP and S&D of reaching agreements behind the scenes. The coordinators of the political groups of the TAXE committee agreed last Monday that the work needed to continue, De Masi pointed out. “We therefore asked for the report to be labelled interim report in order to allow the substantive add-ons in the next stage; this is what the big groups do not want as they fear the discussion of political responsibility for tax dodging”, he concluded. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)