Brussels, 23/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 22 February, the coordinators of the special TAXE II committee of the European Parliament decided that a report on aggressive tax optimisation, rather than a resolution, would be drafted once their work is finished.
Denmark's Jeppe Kofod (S&D) was confirmed co-rapporteur alongside Germany's Michael Theurer (ALDE). The chair of the TAXE committee, Alain Lamassoure, is theoretically expected to call for a two-month extension of the mandate of this special committee, on the advice of the coordinators. The draft report will therefore be voted on by the committee on 20 June and in plenary in July.
Kofod said that the objective will be to extend, intensify and renew the MEPs' investigation into “the tax practices of both multinational companies and tax jurisdictions - be they EU member states or not”. On 29 February, the committee will hear Eric Wiebes, Dutch secretary of state for finance. On 14 March, the MEPs will hold a hearing of representatives of Jersey and Guernsey and the Isle of Man, if the last of these confirms. On 15 March, it will be Liechtenstein and Monaco's turn, together with Andorra and the Cayman Islands, if they confirm their attendance. On the same day, Apple, Google, Fiat, Ikea, McDonald's and Starbucks have also been invited to attend, but none of these has yet replied to the invitation. The banks Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Banco Santander, UBS, UniCredit, ING and Nordea Bank have been invited to attend on 21 March.
On 4 April, the Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, is also to attend a hearing. The MEPs also want to hear from her colleague for Financial Services, Jonathan Hill, ahead of the presentation by his services on 12 April of a legislative proposal on public country-by-country reporting. The Greens/EFA group also hopes to invite the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to answer questions about the tax agreement recently concluded between London and Google. Due to the recently announced referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the EU in June, however, it is unlikely that the MEPs will end up hosting the British Chancellor, an EP source told us.
“The special committee's investigation continues to be seriously hampered by the refusal of the European Commission and of the governments to cooperate by sending key documents. Whilst the Commission has started to send some important documents after several months of negotiations, we are still waiting for 90% of the documents we have asked for”, said the President of the Greens/EFA group, Philippe Lamberts. According to details provided by Germany's Fabio De Masi, the Commission has sent just 500 documents of the corporate taxation code of conduct group, out of 5,500. The Commission is reported to have justified this by the existence of several versions of the same document. De Masi also explains that the minutes of just 28 meetings of the 'Code of Conduct' group have been received, out of 126 meetings held since 1998. Additionally, no document later than June 2015 has been handed over. The meeting of the coordinators attended by the Director General of DG Taxation and Customs Union on Monday evening is reported to have focused on access to these documents. The Deputy Director General of DG Competition is reported to have acknowledged that the Commission's services has limited resources to devote to looking into possible legal State aid granted by member states through tax agreements. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)