On Tuesday 18 July, members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) examined amendments to the draft report by Olivier Chastel (Renew Europe, Belgian) on the European Commission’s proposal on VAT in the digital age (‘ViDA’) (see EUROPE 13188/15). Several compromises have already been proposed by the rapporteur and are in the process of being accepted.
The European Commission presented this initiative in December 2022 (see EUROPE 13080/19). Its aim is to reduce VAT fraud, particularly ‘carousel’ fraud involving several businesses established in at least two EU Member States.
As Mr Chastel pointed out, the European finance ministers discussed this text at the Ecofin Council in June. Although there is consensus on the text in principle, certain details, such as the implementation date and the presumed supplier mechanism, are open to debate (see EUROPE 13203/4).
MEPs tabled 251 amendments to the directive and 108 to the draft regulation. An initial meeting between group representatives took place last week. “I had grouped the vast majority of the amendments received relating to the articles into eight compromises”, explained the rapporteur.
In his opinion, there seems to be “common ground” on the postponement of the dates of entry into force by one year, the extension of the deadline for electronic invoicing and the transmission deadline.
According to Aurore Lalucq (S&D, French), her group is “open” to this amendment, but she draws a distinction between the issuance invoices and their transmission, because “that’s where the fraud comes in”. “If we take away this speed of transmission, we lose everything we’re trying to do to fight white-collar crime”, she argued.
“There is still work to be done on the format of national electronic invoices that are not subject to the declaration obligations”, said Mr Chastel. For Lídia Pereira (EPP, Portuguese), “invoicing systems must be rationalised”, but only to a limited extent in order to “avoid excessive transition costs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)” (see other news). Ms Lalucq, on the other hand, advocated a structure defined at European level, which, despite “a significant entry cost”, would eventually enable “substantial economies of scale”.
The report will be put to the vote in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs at the end of October.
To read the amendments to the draft directive, go to https://aeur.eu/f/85j
And to read the amendments to the draft regulations, go to https://aeur.eu/f/85k (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)