Strasbourg, 09/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - At its plenary session on Tuesday 10 May, the European Parliament will hold a debate with the European Commission on the state of the Greek economic adjustment programme, with the Eurozone finance ministers to meet at the start of the week to take stock of the same question themselves (see other article).
The chair of the committee on economic and financial affairs of the EP, Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy) has already set the tone on behalf of this committee, by stating that it appears difficult to justify the demands of the institutions (Commission, ECB, IMF) for Greece to adopt budgetary contingency measures to be triggered in the event that the country deviates from its objectives. The Parliament has set up a working group responsible for following developments in the international financial assistance plan to Greece. It will debate these in plenary on Tuesday, at a session attended by the Commissioner and the Vice-President with responsibility for the dossier, Pierre Moscovici and Valdis Dombrovskis respectively.
Again with these two Commissioners, the MEPs will debate growth and youth employment, and will vote on the 'Rosati' report on country-by-country reporting to the tax administrations (EUROPE 11540). This text represents the translation into European legislation of the OECD standard on country-by-country reporting, which guarantees the confidentiality of the information and it's exchange between tax administrations. The GUE/NGL group, which is calling for public reporting (now also in the legislative pipeline) has already announced that it will be voting against the report. The EP is only consulted in the taxation field and it is too late for the Council to take its opinion on board, as it agreed on this dossier in March.
The emphasis will also be laid on the functioning of Schengen and the reform of the Dublin Regulation for asylum seekers, with the Commission to present its recent proposal on Wednesday 11 May (EUROPE 11546). Readers may recall that on 4 May of this year, the Commission proposed a reform of the Dublin Regulation whereby it will continue to be based on the principle of the country of first entry to the EU, but it will be added to by a corrective mechanism in the event of an influx of asylum seekers to a given country. On behalf of the ECR group, Timothy Kirkhope of the UK said that the Commission was quite right to maintain the base principles of Dublin, but should “stop pushing the already failing relocation system”. The EPP group, for its part, reiterated that it had been calling for these changes to the Dublin Regulation for a year and explained that the proposal strikes a very good balance.
After three years of negotiations, the Parliament is also to adopt the final agreement reached in December of last year with the Council on a regulation to reinforce the mandate of Europol to ensure that the agency is genuinely able to fight the increase in cross-border crimes and terrorist threats.
Tuesday, the MEPs will hold a debate on the granting of market economy status to China. The EPP argues that this could have “disastrous consequences for employment and industry in Europe”, was the ECR says that it is keeping an open mind.
On Thursday, the MEPs will take position on a resolution on the traceability of fisheries and fish-farming products in retail sales and in catering. The text calls upon the Commission to establish common eco-certification criteria and a single and independent European eco-label (EUROPE 11517).
TTIPleaks, Panama Papers doesn't make it onto the agenda. The request by the Greens/EFA group for a debate on TTIPleaks (EUROPE 11544) has failed to bear fruit and the group's chair, the Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts, took to Twitter openly to accuse the leader of the S&D, Italy's Gianni Pittella, of having opposed it at the conference of the presidents on 4 May. The conference of the presidents will meet this Thursday to discuss the possibility of creating a committee of investigation into the Panama Papers scandal (EUROPE 11540), as the number of MEPs' signatures has still to be gathered. According to several sources from various groups, the EPP is no longer in favour of the consensus that this committee of investigation will complete the unfinished work of the special committee TAXE2 (tax rulings, created in the wake of Luxleaks). A spokesperson for the EPP group stressed on Monday that the emphasis was different and that the mandates of these two committees will be different. Technical negotiations on the broad outlines of the mandate were still to be held on Monday evening. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)