MEPs voted in favour of a report by José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portuguese) and Valérie Hayer (Renew Europe, French) aimed at identifying a second basket of own resources to feed the EU budget (see EUROPE 13177/11) on Wednesday 10 May (356 votes in favour, 199 against and 65 abstentions).
“Own resources are the solution for investing together”, Valérie Hayer told EUROPE after the vote. She added: “It’s an approach that involves both putting in place tools to generate revenue and changing behaviours through our budget”.
The second basket of own resources includes a new EU ‘fair border mechanism’, taxation of financial transactions and crypto-currencies, the use of part of the revenue from corporate taxation in the EU (BEFIT), a levy on large digital content providers and statistics-based own resources (gender pay gap, biowaste recycling rate).
All amendments, including direct taxation of the highest personal incomes, were rejected, much to the dismay of the S&D, The Left and Greens/EFA groups, which tabled them (see EUROPE 13178/6). “I regret that the right-wing group and the liberals in the European Parliament have proved once again, in the plenary vote, that they are firmly behind the rich”, commented Eider Gardiazabal Rubial (S&D, Spanish).
“There is no majority in this Parliament for that today”, Valérie Hayer retorted. “This is the first time that the European Parliament has come up with completely new proposals. This is therefore an innovative and very ambitious approach for the European Parliament”, she said.
These proposals for new own resources for the EU budget now need to be assessed by the European Commission, as was the case with the first basket of own resources (see EUROPE 13165/17). A Commission proposal is expected in September.
To see the report: https://aeur.eu/f/6tm (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)