EN - Annual #Tax Report Rapporteur Eva Kailis opening statement 13.10: Thank you. I welcome our first exchange of views on the Annual Taxation Report which has of course gained momentum after the hearings of last week. Even if political groups have different positions on taxation issues, I am convinced that the majority of us agree that progress could be quicker, more efficient, and agree that we could have done better, and we can all welcome Pierre Moscovicis encouraging words on the taxation ambitions of the upcoming Commission. Besides, during the hearings, all the Commissioners-designate, the ones we were voting for, expressed the need for a transformation agenda, and they proposed steps towards the implementation of a more cohesive, integrated, social- and business-friendly economic policy. Let me add that this agenda necessarily includes a shift from a monolithic, strict, monetarist policy, not successful at all until now I may add, to a more relaxed and investment-friendly monetary policy, accompanied with significant fiscal adjustments and fiscal alignments. We could welcome this new direction without overlooking the almost catastrophic consequences of the delay to adopt it, but neither should we ignore the resistance to change that still remains as a mentality, but hopefully not a majority. The reorientation in our fiscal approach is not possible to realise without a clear, functional and comprehensive tax policy, which must be fairer, growth-friendly, with respect to the right to own property, with respect to the right to protect basic wages and the right to entrepreneurship, and this necessarily requires a tax regime that shifts the tax burden to protect the weaker of the working population, to protect small property owners and of course the non-productive property, and requires big property owners and big corporations to be be fairly taxed, proportionally to the wealth they produce and generate. We also need to make our priority to control multinational companies that are tax evading ; at the time being, letting the technicalities aside, this is an ethical standard and basis for common taxation that hopefully we can all agree on to start with. Sadly, there is also a set of issues that always appear pending in our taxation report, so we have to keep working on this. It is a signal that we should underscore and not ignore because tax fraud is for example once again on the top of our priorities along with tax evasion, tax avoidance, agressive tax planning and tax heavens, even inside Europe, and we have to address them efficiently. This will have to remain a strong point in this years report and hopefully for the last time, because we need to make significant progress on other important issues too that are already in the pipeline, that is the Financial Transaction Tax, common consolidated corporate tax base, energy taxation, automatic exchange of information, country by country reporting, and of course banking secrecy. So this is just an indicative set of issues that our colleagues of the previous legislature and now us have to deal with, and we are here to discuss about these issues and others productively and pragmatically to reach a common position, and I am very much looking forward to hearing all of my colleagues inputs on what they find most important to see in this report. And I would remind all of us again Pierre Moscovicis recent statement ; he said that we could possibly the last chance of Europe ; we should act having that in our mind. SO I am trying to be also very short, because I know we dont have enough time, and there will be plenty of time to talk and debate on these issues. Thank you very much. Statement by Shadow Rapporteur Theodor Stolojan ( EPP - European Peoples Party, RO). Statement by Shadow Rapporteur Sampo Terho (ECR, FI). Statement by Shadow Rapporteur Cora van Nieuwenhuizen ( ALDE Group – Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament, NL). Statement by Shadow Rapporteur Miguel Viegas (GUE/NGL, PT). Statement by Shadow Rapporteur Molly Scott Cato MEP (Greens/EFA, UK). Absence of Efdd Shadow Rapporteur. Closing Remarks by Eva Kaili. © Frédérick Moulin 2014 - EU2014 - All rights reserved.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 11:18:43 +0000
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