Brussels, 28/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - Last Friday, the European Commission welcomed the European Parliament's approval of the Fiscalis 2003-2007 programme (we shall come back to this). Proposed by the Commission in January this year, the programme helps Member States to work more closely together with a view to preventing tax fraud, through improved electronic information exchange systems between national administrations, cooperation in investigations, training seminars for tax officials and experts and the exchanges of officials between national administrations. The programme will be open to the candidate countries.
Fiscalis 2003-2007 replaces and strengthens the existing Fiscalis programme which expires at the end of 2002. One of the main features of the new programme is that its scope is extended to direct taxation. The cost of the programme will be shared between the European Community and the participating countries with the EC Budget providing EUR 44 million spread over the five years. The budget will be increased on enlargement of the European Union to cover the needs of the new Member States. (See http: //http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/taxation_customs/whatsnew_en.htm ).