Strasbourg, 25/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - The negotiations underway into the possible continuation of the work of the special TAXE committee on tax rulings somewhat overshadowed the vote on the report produced by this committee, on Wednesday 25 November. Most of the recommendations, however, were supported by a comfortable majority.
In our last edition (see EUROPE 11437), we explained that the new mandate was being sketched out between the major groups of this committee, to ensure that the member states continue to implement the recommendations of the report and those called for by the OECD in its action plan to fight aggressive tax planning by multinationals. The start of the vote saw a somewhat heated exchange between the co-president of the Greens/EFA at the EP, Philippe Lamberts, and the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. The latter argues that a special committee expires with the vote on its final report, but the Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups are challenging this legal interpretation. “It is the President who is responsible for interpreting the Parliament regulation”, said Martin Schulz. The Greens/EFA had backed down on their calls for the vote on the report to be postponed, as they had received assurances from their colleagues on Monday that the special committee would be extended as is. “Commitments were made on the Monday session; if you had any legal misgivings, then would have been the time to say so”, Lamberts retorted.
At the conference of the presidents of the groups this Thursday 26 November, the Greens/EFA group therefore intends to call for a vote on extending the mandate of the committee as it is, as this was on the agenda. If this request is turned down, it will call for time to make amendments to the draft mandate confirmed yesterday upon the committee by the three largest groups, meeting to discuss the issue. The president of the TAXE committee, EPP member Alain Lamassoure (France), said that he had not been invited to this meeting.
The co-rapporteur on this dossier, Germany's Michael Theurer (ALDE), explained that he did not want to lose any time and therefore to keep the same team for the TAXE committee. The second item on his wish list is to “include and reinforce the old mandate (…). The new mandate is not yet quite satisfactory”. The other co-rapporteur Elisa Ferreira (S&D, Portugal), explained that keeping the special committee with a new mandate was not bureaucratically compatible with the vote on the report, which she does not want to see become “academic study”. “Concretely, the S&D group wants to go back to the previous mandate and complete it where it is not completed”, she explained. She is therefore calling for an additional mandate.
The German MEP Burkhard Balz (EPP) argued that the special committee had, to a great extent, fulfilled that mandate. “We have to see if there are still things which are not clear to us, which are outstanding and which are included in documents we have not been given”, he explained. The desire to continue the fight for access to documents of the 'Code of Conduct' group seems to be shared by all the principal groups.
All of the amendments the EPP, particularly the one adding medium-sized businesses and not just SMEs to the exemption from the obligation of public country-by-country reporting, were adopted. At a press conference, Danuta Hubner, shadow rapporteur of the EPP on this dossier, stressed the need for a balance between transparency and the protection of commercial interests and warned against placing any extra burden on the shoulders of SMEs. The amendment of the Greens/EFA group on the responsibility of Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands for blocking progress in the 'Code of Conduct' group was rejected. However, the GUE/NGL amendment referring to inconsistencies in what the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said about the report by Jeannot Krecké on tax evasion (and the page on tax rulings missing from it) is also included in the report. A further amendment criticising the Commission for denying access to the documents of the 'Code of Conduct' is also adopted (by 624 votes). The report was adopted by 508 votes in favour, 108 against and 85 abstentions. The NGO Oxfam welcomes this outcome. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)