Meeting in Brussels of the Special Committee on Tax Rulings II and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, on the Commission’s legislative plans for 2016 in the field of corporate taxation. Statements by Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, Burkhard BALZ (EPP, DE), Elisa FERREIRA (S&D, PT), Bernd LUCKE (ECR, DE) and Petr JEZEK (ALDE, CZ).

exchange of views

fight against tax fraud and evasion (T)

Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

LUCKE, Bernd (ECR, DE)

MOSCOVICI, Pierre (PSE, FR, EC)

JEŽEK, Petr (ALDE, CZ)

BALZ, Burkhard (EPP, DE)

Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect

FERREIRA, Elisa (S&D, PT, EC)

Exchange of views with Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs on the Commission’s legislative plans for 2016 in the field of corporate taxation : extracts

Arrival of Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs , At the end of this month, the Commission will be presenting an ambitious package on the fight against fraud and tax avoidance, its the anti tax avoidance package, the ATAP, that will be the first part of our anti tax avoidance programme.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs , 2016 will be the year of the rebirth of the CCCTB, there will be a proposal. We will begin with the Common Tax Base and then we will work towards consolidation.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs , Let me reaffirm that the Commission is maintaining its tempo on the country by country reporting. We believe that the best way to move forward on this is to conclude the impact assessment which is currently ongoing. Following the impact assessment, my colleagues Mrs JOUROVA, Mr HILL and myself will have the data necessaryto draw up a proposal to the co-legislators for next spring.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs , I can't say a great deal on the investigations carried out by my colleague Mrs VESTAGER, but you can be sure that she will be ambitious on this. When it comes to Member States and also for businesses. She showed that today, the Commission has just concluded that the Belgian excess profit scheme was illegal, it is to be regarded as state aid that means 700 million will be retrieved from 35 multinationals.

SOUNDBITE (German), Burkhard BALZ (EPP, DE), There is a a possible risk that EU companies may find themselves a at a completive disadvantage. If they have to publish comprehensive reports but companies from third countries don't have to do this. How do you intend to ensure commissioner that there is a clear delimitation between big multinationals and small companies that operate across the borders?

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs , The OECD wants automatic exchange of information between tax administrations, and of course our proposals will include at least that as a minimum. The question is should we go beyond that? Should we include the publication of this data? In order to be consistent I think I should say what I think, I am in favour of this.

SOUNDBITE (Portuguese), Elisa FERREIRA (S&amp;D, PT), Precisely with the Luxembourg Minister of Finance Mr GRAMEGNA, in the meeting it emerged that there are often reasonable criticisms of changes that the Council introduced into the Commission proposal on automatic exchange of information, so I wanted to ask about that.

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs , This constraint, the unanimity rule, is a major constraint to what we can do. I mean the issue is how far can we go when it comes to our compromises, and I believe that quality of the compromises achieved by the Luxembourgish Presidency is very high. And obviously the Commission wanted to go further.

SOUNDBITE (German), Bernd LUCKE (ECR, DE), Second question, how effective do you think the Commission's measures will be, or the ones that they are proposing, when it comes to preventing this extent of tax avoidance? Could you give us some sort of percentage figure?

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs , We do know that we are talking about huge figures. I don't think we need to get the figure in advance in order to act decisively. So I can't give you even a rough figure. But we have measured the extent of the phenomenon and we are aware of the mechanisms that we are fighting, and we have to look at whether our measures, our responses are appropriate.

SOUNDBITE (French), Petr JE&#381;EK (ALDE, CZ), And some Member States feel that self-imposition of VAT would be effective against this type of fraud. What do you think, could it be an efficient solution against VAT fraud?

SOUNDBITE (French), Pierre MOSCOVICI, Member of the EC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, We want to find a definitive solution on VAT so we will be presenting another a new VAT package within the next semester which will try to tackle this question of VAT fraud which is considerable.