Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-07-Speech-1-026-000"
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"en.20110307.17.1-026-000"2
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"Mr President, allow me, first of all, to thank the shadow rapporteurs, the secretariat of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and the chairs of the political groups for their constructive contribution to the debates and the efforts made to reach agreement on this very important report.
Another commonly accepted premise, based simply on the figures, on the data, on how the volume of financial transactions has soared over the last decade, is the huge and constantly increasing diversion from its basic role, which is to finance the real economy.
These two assumptions are broadly accepted by Parliament and by the European Commission in its recent communication on taxation of the financial sector.
So what we face here is a blatant injustice which needs to be remedied by sending a strong message to the citizens of Europe, a message that we have indeed learned from the crisis, that we are seeking a fairer distribution of burdens, and that we are determined to take any action needed at global and European level to bring the financial sector back to its basic role, which is to finance the real economy.
There is broad assent that the most suitable tax mechanism for achieving these objectives is a tax on financial transactions. A tax such as this would be predicated on quantity, frequency and, ultimately, quality, by which we mean the added value of the transaction itself, because, as we all agreed in paragraph 13, ‘the introduction of an FTT could help to tackle highly damaging trading patterns in financial markets, such as some short-term and automated HFT transactions, and curb speculation’.
Obviously, we all want, as our first choice, for this tax to be adopted at global level. However, it is equally obvious that, the initial ambitious statements notwithstanding, instead of the probability of global agreement increasing, it is constantly shrinking.
The question, therefore, that arises here is, what are we in Europe going to do? Are we going to hide behind the lack of global agreement? Is that enough and, more importantly, will it convince the citizens who are shouldering the burden of the crisis? Even if it will not be easy to go right ahead and adopt a financial transaction tax at European level, because it will be hard to obtain a unanimous decision by the Council, as the only European institution elected directly by European citizens, the European Parliament has a duty to send out a clear political message along these lines. It is our duty, not the European Commission’s duty, to send out a strong political message.
The European Parliament own-initiative report on innovative financing could not have come at a better time, because the crisis which, as we all know, is putting everyone to the test, especially the euro area at the moment, has resulted in a severe reduction in public sector resources, extensive austerity programmes and budgetary consolidation in the majority of Member States. At the same time, it has put massive pressure on the EU budget, as we saw very recently in the debate on the new financial framework.
As described, this situation has given rise to a basic and commonly accepted conclusion. It is the citizens of Europe who are shouldering most of the weight of the crisis, with pay cuts, with unemployment, with the insecurity surrounding their jobs and with cutbacks in their social rights.
The second basic and commonly accepted conclusion to come out of this situation is that Europe and the Member States urgently need new resources which will help to bring about the speedy recovery of and growth in the European economy, this time in a balanced manner that limits inequalities and divergences. This is the only way to create the preconditions to the successful implementation of the EU 2020 strategy and the only way that allows us to discuss a real, proper and strong internal market that will benefit its citizens.
We therefore need new resources and we agree, as expressly stated in the report and I quote, that: ‘an increase in the rates and scope of existing taxation tools and further cuts in public expenditure can be neither a sufficient nor a sustainable solution to address the main challenges ahead at European and global level’.
Innovative financing can play a key role in meeting these challenges because it can help enormously in generating resources for national budgets and for the EU budget. However, that is not the only benefit of innovative financing: innovative financing does not simply mean finding new resources; it is equally important for us to pave the way for gradual changes to the current tax model, under which the main burden of taxation and of funding the economy in general has traditionally been borne by labour, business and productive investments.
The considerable added value of innovative financing, the double dividend as it were, is that, as well as generating revenue, it can also assume an important regulatory role: it can discourage harmful practices and conduct both in the financial sector and in the environmental and conservation sector.
The report comprises four basic chapters: taxation of the financial sector, Eurobonds and European project bonds, carbon tax and financing for development.
As far as taxation of the financial sector is concerned, we have again started from a basic and commonly accepted premise: that, even though it was basically responsible for the crisis, even though it generated and, despite the crisis, continues to generate excessive profits, the financial sector is under-taxed, because it is exempt from value added tax almost across the board."@en1
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