Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2016-11-22-Speech-2-076-000"
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"en.20161122.3.2-076-000"2
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"Madam President, last week Nobel Prize-winning winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz gave evidence to our Panama Papers Inquiry Committee and he was also kind enough to spend some time meeting informally with a group of Green MEPs and staff. He was very clear about the importance of ensuring that corporations pay their fair share of tax, but also about the fact that there are still many obstacles in our way, the most obvious being continued secrecy and the jurisdictions that offer this to the rich and powerful.
The Anti-Money-Laundering Directive is key to tackling not just tax avoidance but the web of secrecy, money-laundering and criminal activity that is perpetuated by secrecy jurisdictions, such as the various UK overseas territories whose hidden activity was revealed in the Panama Papers. The revision to the Directive on Administrative Cooperation with regard to anti-money-laundering information that we are debating here today is therefore very welcome. I am pleased that we have cross-party agreement on this file and that Parliament has agreed that the Commission should have been more ambitious in its proposal.
While this revision to the directive is an important step forward, we believe that there continue to be several loopholes that could be used by tax-dodging experts to circumvent the automatic exchange of information, thereby undermining its effectiveness. As an example, synthetic tax residence certificates are readily available in countries such as Panama and the Bahamas to avoid reporting to the Union authority. To counter this, any previous residence in the EU within the last 10 years should be deemed as an indication of current residence, and a tax clearance certificate should be used to establish actual residence.
I welcome the fact that we have agreed on a strong and united position from this Parliament on the automatic exchange of information between Member States’ tax authorities, as well as our Green call for the Commission to have access to the information exchanged. We emphasise to the Council and Commission our clear view that making the information readily available in this way increases our ability to fight tax fraud.
I am delighted that we have agreed a strong and united position. I hope we will now progress towards making all such tax information public, as well as ensuring that the whistleblowers whom we currently rely on to cast light into the dark corners of the world’s financial system will be properly protected."@en1
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