Thirty-nine MEPs called on the European Commission to introduce a digital tax in a letter sent on 7 April. Twenty-three of them come from the ranks of the S&D, seven from the Greens/EFA, six from The Left, two from Renew Europe and one from the EPP.
MEPs referred to the Interinstitutional Agreement of 16 December 2020 to remind the Commission that the EU had committed itself to putting in place new own resources during the period of the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027. These proposals were to include a “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and a digital levy”.
In the end, the digital tax was not included in the package of three new own resources to be submitted by the European Commission in December 2021 (see EUROPE 12859/3), so as to give priority to the OECD, which had taken the initiative to give the regulations a stronger international dimension.
And as the absence of an agreement at global level could not justify “not taxing these [digital] companies”, as Wopke Hoekstra stated during his confirmation hearing for the post of European Commissioner in autumn 2024, these thirty-nine MEPs are asking the European Commission to propose a new own resource on digital.
The context of “aggressive” tariffs established by the Trump administration justifies this measure all the more, according to MEPs. One of the signatories of the letter, Rasmus Andresen (Greens/EFA, German), published a study on the subject at the beginning of April which he had commissioned from the think tank CEPS (see EUROPE 13622/22).
See the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/gha
See the institutional agreement of 16 December 2020: https://aeur.eu/f/gh9 (Original version in French by Florent Servia)