Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-01-Speech-3-200"
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"en.20041201.18.3-200"2
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".
Mr President, I should firstly like to say that I am delighted that, for my first speech in plenary session in this House, there is an esteemed audience present. I also wish to greet Mr Kovács, the new Commissioner-designate for taxation, who is similarly having his baptism of fire today. In view of the lateness of the hour, I shall try not to use up the ten minutes that have been allotted to me. I wonder, for that matter, about the significance of holding such a debate, given that three reports of the same nature have already been adopted and it appears that the political group that requested this debate is not even represented this evening.
In the absence of any coordination of national systems of taxation of savings income, some residents of the Member States were able to avoid any form of taxation in their State of residence on interest which they received in another State. Consequently, a directive was drafted to remedy this situation, which is conducive to the development of damaging fiscal competition, as capital tends to flow to countries outside the European Union with abnormally low rates of taxation. The lack of information about this income thus hampers the proper functioning of the single market.
In this context, the Council authorised the Commission, by its decision of 16 October 2001, to negotiate appropriate agreements with Switzerland, the United States of America, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco and San Marino under which those countries would adopt measures equivalent to those to be applied within the Community, so as to ensure effective taxation of savings income in the form of interest payments. Since then, the Council adopted the directive on taxation of savings income on 3 June 2003, which provides for a system of information exchange. Three Member States (Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg) attached conditions to this abolition of banking secrecy. They secured a transitional period during which they will be authorised to withhold tax instead of exchanging information.
In the meantime, agreements have been negotiated with Switzerland, Andorra, Liechtenstein, San Marino and Monaco. In the case of the United States, the existing framework of bilateral relations with the Member States with regard to taxation makes it possible to conclude that equivalent measures already exist. The agreements between the European Community and Switzerland, Andorra and Liechtenstein were very recently submitted to Parliament and were adopted. The two last agreements to be submitted to Parliament are the agreements with Monaco and San Marino. The content of these two agreements is similar to the content of the agreements that have previously been examined. I shall briefly detail them: withholding of tax at source shared with the State of residence, voluntary disclosure of information at the initiative of the income recipient, a review clause and progress on exchanges of information in cases of tax fraud.
These two agreements, like the previous ones, represent a major step forward from the political point of view. The agreements will have the effect of ensuring the adoption by the countries concerned of measures equivalent to those which must be implemented within the European Union to tax effectively savings income in the form of interest payments made in one State and intended for recipients residing in another State. This instrument should permit effective taxation, which is necessary to combat damaging tax competition and help improve the functioning of the single market. In order to attain this objective, the automatic exchange of information between tax authorities provided for by Directive 2003/48/EC is an appropriate means.
With these two agreements, the necessary phase of concluding agreements prior to the implementation of the directive for the countries that I mentioned above comes to an end. The implementation of this series of agreements was initially scheduled for 1 January 2005. It was postponed, however, until 1 July 2005 by a Council decision of 19 July 2004, as the various conditions for their implementation ought to be met by then. It is important that this date should be respected in order for the whole package to be implemented properly."@en1
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