Strasbourg, 18/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament welcomed the European Commission's communication of the EU's priorities on tax policy, adopting a report by the Italian Radical Benedetto Della Vedova at last week's plenary session in Strasbourg. Parliamentarians consider that "tax competition is not against the construction of the internal market" and "do not regard as negative, to go along the lines of the competitiveness and the dynamism of the European economy, that gaps observed in company taxation, should have an effect on the localisation of investments". They do, however, back the reflections of the European Commission on the need for a consolidated tax base for European companies.
At the same time, Parliament deplores the fact that "excessive fiscal pressure observed in many Member States over the past three decades should have in particular affected income tax".
Taking on board stances developed elsewhere by Parliament, the resolution considers it apt to apply the principle of "polluter pays" in the field of energy and "urges the Council to adopt the framework-directive as soon as possible relating to the tax on energy products". Along the lines of the Turmes Report, adopted in the same plenary session (see EUROPE of 14 March, p.11), it "denounces the serious distortions to competition linked in particular to asymmetries observed in the level of liberalisation of national markets that affect the energy sector".
MEPs recall that they do not subscribe to "the policy followed by the Commission regarding excise on tobacco and alcoholic products". You may recall that, in February, the Council adopted a directive upwardly harmonising excise on tobacco, without taking account of the EP position, consulted in the matter (see EUROPE of 13 February, p.8). The EP opposed this harmonisation, adopting the Katiforis Report of 12 February, but demanded it in the name of health, by adopting seven years earlier the Von Wogau report. The MEPs had anyway swept that argument aside, stressing that meanwhile the majority had changed.