On Tuesday 11 July, the Estonian finance minister, Toomas Tõniste, presented the economic and monetary affairs committee (ECON) of the European Parliament with the programme of work of the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU in this field.
“The Eurozone is a dream come true for me and for Estonia”, he said in his presentation, adding: “but we are not going to spend this Presidency dreaming, we are going to spend it doing”.
Completing banking union. Tõniste stressed that the Presidency is ready to start negotiations with the European Parliament on the legislative proposal on the hierarchy of bank creditors modifying the 'BRRD' directive - on which the Council reached its position on 16 June (see EUROPE 11810), whilst the work is still underway at the Parliament (see EUROPE 11819).
As regards the other parts of the risk reduction package, the Presidency has set itself the target of reaching a general approach of the Council.
When asked by Dimitrios Papadimoulis (GUE/NGL, Greece) how work was progressing on the third pillar of banking union in the Eurozone - the European Deposit Insurance System (EDIS), which seems to have reached deadlock - the Estonian minister said that this dossier would be dealt with after the one on risk reduction.
Completion of the Capital Markets Union. The new Presidency has already got to work on this, having adopted conclusions on the mid-term revision of the Commission’s action plan at the meeting of the ‘Economic and Monetary Affairs’ Council of the same day (see EUROPE 11827).
In particular, it hopes to reach a common position as soon as possible on the politically sensitive proposal to create a new supervisory mechanism for the central counterparties (CCP) located outside the EU in the framework of the ‘EMIR’ regulation (see EUROPE 11807) and on the proposal to create a pan-European pension product (PEPP) (see EUROPE 11819).
Developing fair taxation. Tõniste stressed the new Presidency's intention of promoting fair taxation, reconciling political issues with technological progress.
Following calls by the chair of the ECON committee, Roberto Gualtieri (S&D, Italy), for progress on the proposed revision of fourth ‘anti-money laundering’ directive, on which inter-institutional negotiations broke down under the Maltese Presidency (see EUROPE 11819), he said that an agreement could be possible in the next six months and that its outcome must be “ambitious and legally viable”.
The MEPs also questioned him about two other sensitive taxation dossiers: the proposed reduction in VAT rates for electronic publications (see EUROPE 11810), which was raised by Pervenche Berès (S&D, France), and the common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB), which was brought up by Paul Tang (S&D, Netherlands). However, both had to make do with fairly vague responses, as the Minister simply said that there was not yet unanimity and that the Presidency would do its best to make progress on these dossiers.
Deepening Economic and Monetary Union. Finally, the Presidency will continue the debate on deepening EMU on the basis of a “compromise between national and European competences”, Tõniste said. “Deepening will take time, this is inevitable”, he added. A discussion is furthermore scheduled in the framework of the informal ministerial meeting to be held in Tallinn on 15 and 16 September. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)