Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-01-Speech-4-009"
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"en.20051201.3.4-009"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, we wanted to take advantage of the two reports by our distinguished fellow Member, Mr Becsey, on the subject of VAT in order to table an oral question to this Assembly which, I hope, will be followed by the adoption of a resolution. As regards, in fact, the reduced VAT rate system in labour-intensive sectors, we are in an economic, social, political and legal situation that is unpleasant to say the least, if not downright complex.
We are today faced with a system that has been extended twice. Thereafter, a proposal by the Commission dating from 2003 was submitted to us, of which the Members of our Parliament voted almost unanimously in favour on 4 December 2003 and which has since been blocked by the Council. Very often we are told that better regulation implies Parliament’s working more quickly, but I sometimes get the impression that we should also see how things take place from the Council’s perspective.
We are here in the realm of unanimity and, while certain Member States will intervene strictly on the basis of national interests by exploiting VAT rates, they are blocking the extension of this system at the Council, a system that has proved its worth. In fact, this system enables us to sustain employment, to combat undeclared work and to organise the tax system more coherently at the level of the Member States. That is why our committee wanted to table this oral question, by means of which we fully support both the Commission’s initiative and the successive efforts of the Luxembourg and the UK Presidencies, both of which have put on the table a compromise proposal that is totally in keeping with the wishes expressed by this Parliament from 2003.
Today we have our backs to the wall: this twice-extended system will expire at the end of the year and, in nine Member States, entire sectors still do not know, at this very moment, which tax system will be applied to them as from 1 January of next year. We are today on the eve of an ECOFIN Council at which, I hope, the Ministers for Economic Affairs and Finance will hear the very loud signal this Assembly wants to send out to them through this oral question, as well as through several written statements, which have been submitted at our Parliament’s Registry and signed by a large number of Members.
The Luxembourg proposal, taken up by the UK Presidency, enables what was, until now, a simple experiment to be clarified, simplified, harmonised and brought into widespread use. For the construction sector and the home care services sector, it is primarily a matter of prolonging the reduced VAT rates. It is a matter of extending a more flexible mechanism and of making plans for this mechanism to be extended until 2015. It is a matter of coherently discarding what is included in the notorious Annex H. On the initiative of the UK Presidency, it is a matter of evaluating the entire mechanism every five years. It seems to me that we have here before us balanced proposals that will make it possible, I repeat, to sustain employment in labour-intensive sectors – that is where the coherence of the proposed fiscal mechanism comes in – to combat undeclared work and to contribute to what is in line to become the leitmotiv of this House – and, I hope, beyond this House, of the Council – namely, better regulation and the Lisbon objectives.
Allow me once again to say to the Council, even though I see that it is not represented in this House this morning, how important it is to obtain the agreement of the Ministers of Economic Affairs and Finance. I believe that solidarity, which must also govern this College’s work should, at the very least, if the Luxembourg and UK proposal were sadly unable to obtain unanimous approval, lead to a further one-year extension of the system as it stands. This would be the ‘least worst’ solution."@en1
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