Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-10-25-Speech-2-647-000"
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"en.20111025.32.2-647-000"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, there will be no political Europe without a fiscal Europe. Unfortunately, the two issues that we are debating today demonstrate the Commission’s lack of ambition on that subject.
As regards the system of taxation for parent companies with subsidiaries in other Member States, under the current directive, these groups are undertaxed, which is detrimental to public finances in the Member States. It has been a boon for transnational groups.
In order to remedy this, I proposed in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs that a parent company should only be exempt from paying tax on profits generated by subsidiaries on two conditions. Firstly, the parent company must hold the statutory minimum of 15% of company equity in another Member State for an uninterrupted period of at least two years in order to benefit from this tax regime. Sadly, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs did not accept that minimum period.
Secondly, the profits distributed by a subsidiary to the parent company used to be taxed at a rate of 75% or more of the average tax rate in the EU Member States. I am pleased to say that the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs did agree to maintain the threshold of 70% of the average tax rate.
The European Commission chose not to comment during our discussions, which was a pity. Consequently, Commissioner, we are left hoping that you will act on the message that we are sending, since Parliament is still not a colegislator on tax matters.
The second symptom of your lack of concern about taxation is your failure to act when the Council quashed the directive on taxation of savings income. The ensuing vacuum has resulted in pick-and-mix bilateral agreements on the exchange of banking information, such as those concluded by the United Kingdom and Germany with Switzerland. Yet the Savings Tax Directive paved the way for automatic exchanges of information with several different tax havens, including Switzerland. The directive was the subject of a report that was adopted by a resounding majority in plenary. Although Mr Barnier has explained that there is no more money available to promote growth, applying the directive would allow us to generate EUR 200 billion for the public purse. A fiscal tool is essential if we are to recover from the crisis. Harmonised taxation is vital for an effective single market. Combating fraud and tax avoidance is crucial if we are to rebalance public accounts.
For all these reasons, Commissioner, I can only urge you to do all you can to promote a fiscal Europe, in order to put an end to the Member States’ self-destructive rivalry. The main casualties of that rivalry are growth, public finances and solidarity among European citizens."@en1
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