On Wednesday 3 July, the S&D Group in the European Parliament debated its priorities and “key demands” for the work of the next parliamentary term 2024-2029. The new draft priorities are more detailed than the last version dated 26 June, and include demands on the rule of law and respect for European values.
However, the group has yet to adopt a document at its meeting on Wednesday.
This document, which reorganises the chapters and develops their content, includes a chapter on ‘Democracy, Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights’, stating that respect for the values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty must remain a priority, by consistently bringing infringement proceedings before the CJEU and enforcing the relevant legislation.
“Article 7 should be reformed to allow qualified majority voting. All rule of law violations should be included in the Conditionality regulation”, writes the group. “The respect of fundamental rights and democratic principles must be preconditions to participate in any EU funding programme. Taking an ambitious approach to the preparation of the next MFF, for all EU funding instruments including the CAP, stronger safeguards are needed regarding the effective fight against and the respect of the independence of justice”. Membership of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office “must be compulsory and its powers extended to cover crimes related to international terrorism and the implementation of sanctions to third countries”.
Fundamental rights and civil liberties must be protected both online and offline, and encryption must be strengthened, the document also states.
On fair taxation, the document goes into more detail about the desired initiatives: - an EU initiative to support the implementation of a wealth tax in the Member States to partly finance the EU’s social and climate transition as a new own resource to strengthen the EU budget; - effective minimum taxation of capital gains at EU level; - an excise duty on the repurchase of shares by companies (share buy-back schemes), harmonised at EU level to avoid distorting the EU financial market; - a framework for the systematic taxation of windfall profits; - a broad-based financial transaction tax, set at a sufficiently high level to deter speculation and yield significant revenue; - stepping up the fight against tax evasion.
On migration, the S&D group also responds to the EPP and stresses “that any future partnership agreement with third countries should be conditional upon stronger involvement of the European Parliament and should not lead to any externalisation of asylum to third countries”.
No more qualified majority voting on foreign policy or Defence Commissioner. On the other hand, the 3 July document abandons the introduction of qualified majority voting in key areas of foreign policy and no longer mentions the creation of a post of Defence Commissioner.
Link to the latest draft: https://aeur.eu/f/cxl (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)