Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-01-Speech-4-031"
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"en.20051201.3.4-031"2
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".
Mr President, I once again express my thanks to Parliament for rapidly examining the proposal on the minimum level for the standard rate – considering that the current rules come to an end on 31 December 2005 – and for the positive contribution by the rapporteur. I understand the concerns of the honourable Members that we are running out of time, but wish to remind you that the Commission tabled its proposal as early as 2003, and it is the Council that has been unable to come to a unanimous decision.
I shall briefly comment on some of the amendments. The first amendment concerns a restriction on the level of the standard rate by setting a maximum level of 25% to prevent growing divergence in the standard rates of VAT applied by the Member States. This would require a new proposal from the Commission, thus preventing the adoption on time of a minimum rate to be applied as from 1 January 2006. Moreover, given past experience it has no chance of being unanimously adopted by the Council.
The second amendment aims at allowing more flexibility in VAT provisions in order to enable Member States to react to the changing economic situation. This is not in line with the first amendment, which tries precisely to prevent such flexibility as regards the standard rate. Generally speaking, this proposal is not yet the appropriate vehicle for carrying out a general assessment of the macro-economic impacts of VAT rates and the associated revenue and budgetary implications for the EU Member States.
I am pleased that part of the one-stop-shop package concerning the VAT refund scheme has the support of the honourable Members. Unfortunately the Commission cannot accept the proposed amendments, for the following reasons.
Amendments 1 and 2 relate to the regulation and cooperation arrangements for the refund procedure, which forms another part of the one-stop-shop proposal. Amendment 3 seeks to extend the deadline, which I believe is not necessary. Amendment 4 is not workable as, on the one hand, a strict deadline of four months for refunds would be imposed on the Member States, but on the other hand, there would be no deadline for a taxable person to hand in the requested additional information. The amendment is, furthermore, in contradiction with the second subparagraph of the same article, which mentions that a new period of three months starts to run as from the moment the additional information is received from the taxable person.
I am convinced that the positive opinion of Parliament will contribute to a timely decision in the Council on the standard rate proposal, and will facilitate the discussion on the one-stop-shop proposals with a view to their adoption under the Austrian Presidency.
Concerning labour-intensive services, I have listened carefully to all the contributions and I can only remind you that the Commission has already taken the necessary steps to support their inclusion in the scope of reduced rates as defined by Annex H. However, the current discussions in the Council are not easy.
I extensively explained in my introduction why I consider that an extension of the experimental arrangements is not really a viable way forward. Moreover, we need to be very cautious, since a unanimous agreement in the Council on such an extension would seem as hard to achieve as a genuine agreement on the scope of the reduced rate as such.
I support the consensus expressed in Parliament’s resolution. This is a very important signal to the Council of the need to reach an agreement that takes into account the interests of the European Union as a whole, as well as those of all the Member States."@en1
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