European Parliament rapporteurs Evelyn Regner (S&D, Austria) and Iban García del Blanco (S&D, Spain) wrote to Peter Altmaier, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs, in early November, asking him to put the issue of Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) on the agenda of the next ‘Competitiveness’ Council on 19 November.
In their letter, the two MEPs believe that Austria’s change of position, now in favour of this text which would oblige companies to make public certain accounting data, such as their turnover, creates an opportunity to obtain the majority required for its adoption (see EUROPE 12379/13) - something the European Parliament has been waiting for since 2017 (see EUROPE 11822/1).
“It is simply unacceptable that a small minority of Member States hiding behind legalistic issues can block this crucial tax justice issue for years. Now that there is a new window of opportunity to get these rules adopted, we must use it”, explained Evelyn Regner.
“Otherwise, Mr Altmaier will have to explain to European citizens why they have to pay their taxes when digital giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon are getting away with paying close to zero taxes - and this at a time when we need everyone to pay their fair share for economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic”, she said.
According to our information, the item is not currently on the agenda of the ‘Competitiveness’ Council. At the end of September, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz had assured that, even if there was no common position of the German government on this proposal, the German EU Council Presidency would not obstruct the decision-making process on this dossier (see EUROPE 12564/30).
See the letter: https://bit.ly/36pg86q (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)