Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-10-Speech-3-239"
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"en.20071010.23.3-239"2
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"Mr President, thank you for your constant support for these issues raised. I must say the biggest problem is that all the competence in customs and value added tax is in the hands of the Member States.
I do not really understand why some Member States are so reluctant to give more possibilities to use the facilities which exist within the European Union institutions. For instance, OLAF has been extremely operational in several cases, in the Philip Morris operation and in the Diabolo fight against counterfeit operations, and this cannot happen without cooperation at European level and cannot happen without support from specific Commission services.
But legally, this is fully in the hands of the Member States, as is the strengthening of customs providing necessary resources. The Commission is doing whatever is possible to facilitate this cooperation. I must say that, without cooperation between Member States, an efficient, effective fight against cigarette smuggling, and especially value added tax fraud, is impossible.
I think that we have common interests here, and we should raise this issue constantly to increase cooperation. Also – and perhaps I understood incorrectly from the interpretation – the Philip Morris agreement was between 10 Member States and the European Commission on the one side and Philip Morris on the other side, which is quite unique. It was the Commission, its legal service and OLAF which achieved this agreement, and, with Ms Gräßle, this is continuing. So I think that we can tell something in the future.
But the main issue is really the reluctance of some Member States to accept the mutual administrative assistance proposal which has been put forward, which can serve as a platform. We are offering a platform for cooperation, and there are still some Member States, some of the bigger Member States (I myself have tried to convince certain ministers of the biggest Member State to be more open to this proposal.) Somehow, there is a lot of suspicion; but, at the same time, being a former finance minister, I know that to fight value added tax fraud and customs is possible only with cooperation between Member States."@en1
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