Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-15-Speech-4-038"
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"en.20040115.2.4-038"2
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"Madam President, unlike the previous speaker, I will mainly be focusing on the directive for which Mrs Kauppi is the rapporteur. Tax avoidance and evasion is widely practised and there is a strong cross-border dimension to it. Cigarette smuggling, VAT carousels and undeclared bank accounts are only a few examples of the repertoire of those who do not want to give Caesar what belongs to him. In the European Union, but also, for example, in Switzerland and the Balkans, we have to look carefully for joint efforts to put effective monitoring in place particularly for taxpayers who are active in various Member States.
The options provided in this directive for joint monitoring by two or more Member States are therefore of major importance. We are particularly referring, therefore, to the improved cooperation between the fiscal authorities of each of the Member States. This is wholly in keeping with the national prerogative of legislating on tax and collecting it. Fiscal legislation is a national responsibility and should remain so, tax being more closely interrelated with social structure and culture within each of the Member States. Against this backdrop, it is extremely odd that the discussion should not revolve around an effective approach to tax fraud but around the question of what legal basis this directive should have. This Parliament has rightly accepted Article 95 as a basis in comparable cases in order for the codecision procedure to apply. This is not about the content of tax legislation but about an implementing provision with regard to administrative cooperation, which is necessary in the internal market.
What Mrs Kauppi predicted in her explanatory statement to her report has meanwhile come to pass: the Council has recently submitted a formal proposal to amend the legal basis. I would call this a knee-jerk response; the Council has once again rejected codecision without any clear arguments. Now that Parliament's position was confirmed on 2 September, this proposal too risks ending up before the Court of Justice. This would lead to unnecessary effort and expense and, above all, possibly long delays for the improved cooperation between the fiscal authorities, which is so desperately needed. I challenge the Council to jump over its own shadow. Back to basics: more effective controls of taxpayers who are active across the border. Tax-evaders move on from one base to another very quickly. The traditional exchange of information cannot possibly keep up. If a joint team of control officials from the relevant countries can establish that tax legislation has been misused and abused, a tit-for-tat approach is possible. The accession of ten new Member States will undoubtedly increase the need for transnational control teams. The open borders to countries with a still vulnerable administrative apparatus will, unfortunately, attract bounty hunters who have as few scruples in tax matters as they do in anything else. The sooner the tax authorities can fight this as one, the better."@en1
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