Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-341"
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"en.20020313.13.3-341"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the report by Mr Pérez Royo is to be welcomed for the balanced approach and technical competence employed in its preparation. A subject like the taxation of savings certainly ought to be dealt with in such a manner because the field is so sensitive.
The Commission and the Council have considered at least three hypothetical paths to take in their time, often changing their minds and their strategies. They are: a withholding tax, the exchange of information, and both possibilities together. In the end, they opted for the exchange of information and, after a heated debate in the Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs, this was limited to natural persons. As shadow rapporteur I fought for the exclusion of legal persons from the directive, because a business, whatever form of company status it may have, is obliged to draw up a balance sheet and have it approved. As soon as investments in savings products appear on it, the income they generate must consequently be indicated in the accounts. Therefore, extending the communication requirement to legal persons would be not only superfluous but certainly counterproductive, since it would overburden the communication in a manner that is surely avoidable.
The problem of third countries also needs to be addressed. Should any of them fail to accept the mechanism, it would undermine the whole directive because, if at the time of implementation the conditions in the Member States and third countries were not uniform, it would be highly feasible for substantial amounts of savings to be transferred in real time. The conclusions of the Feira European Council unequivocally state that sufficient reassurances must be obtained from third countries regarding these or equivalent measures so that the adoption and implementation of the directive may be decided upon no later than 31 December 2002, by unanimity.
Another important aspect concerns the Member States that are not subject to the communication requirement for a period of seven years: Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg. These States, however, as laid down in Amendment No 14 to Article 10 paragraph 1, will be required at the end of the transitional period to fully participate in the automatic exchange of information. In the way the directive has been drawn up, all attempts to maintain anonymity have been blocked. It will also be necessary to make it work smoothly and fluently, keeping a watchful eye open for any laundering of dirty money. Without this opportunity to launder money, national and international terrorism will find it hard to survive.
From this perspective, my Amendment No 6 to Article 3 paragraph 2 (b) also seeks to establish the full personal identity of all contractual relations made prior to the directive as soon as they show any kind of activity. In this regard, it would be desirable to have a European personal data centre to check all major movements of money that may have – or are just suspected of having – connections with international terrorism."@en1
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