Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-08-Speech-1-191"
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"en.20100308.19.1-191"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as shadow rapporteur for the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, I simply cannot understand how anyone can be against freeing micro-entities – and I stress micro-entities, not small or medium-sized businesses – from annual accounting obligations. Here we are not talking about the export-oriented medium-sized company from Baden-Württemberg with a hundred employees, but small craft enterprises, the flower shop, the baker around the corner, the newly founded IT start-up business. For years, politicians have been repeating over and over, both at national and European level, that precisely these micro-entities must be relieved. Relieved from unnecessary costs, in this case, unnecessary costs for a tax advisor, not from the otherwise essential costs – in Belgium it is lawyers who complete these annual accounts, in France auditors – and relieved from an unnecessary amount of work and administrative burdens, now more than ever in the current financial and economic crisis.
Now that the Commission has finally tabled the proposal, which Parliament has called on it to do for so long, all of a sudden, the sceptics and nay-sayers express concerns. Only seven per cent of the micro-entities that we are talking about are involved in cross-border activities. Therefore, with regard to the principle of subsidiarity, there should not be any regulation at all at European level. To make matters worse, the accounting rules have continued to be oriented towards the needs of large and medium-sized businesses, and have been totally inappropriate for the micro-entities we are talking about here from the outset.
I hear the arguments of the opposition, firstly, that the micro-entrepreneur might need a loan and then not be able to present his bank with anything. I say to you, anyone who is familiar with Basel II knows that for the bank, the annual balance sheet is at best a nice bonus, but nothing more. Secondly, the supposed creditor protection: creditors who depend on the annual balance sheet are in the minority. In all my time as a lawyer, when a business of this size is sold, I have never experienced a buyer depending on the significance of annual accounts in whatever form. Thirdly, the southern Member States of the European Union – yes, precisely those that right now are the subject of constant inglorious reports in our newspapers – want to maintain the old regulation. They can do this as the regulation is optional. However, states that demand annual financial statements from micro-enterprises because they do not have effective tax administration and exercise no control, apart from the receipt of the annual financial statement, should hardly be surprised if they have missing tax revenue or tax fraud.
I therefore call on all MEPs, in particular, the Social Democrats, to approve this sensible regulation, especially as Mr Lehne from our Committee on Legal Affairs took all concerns into account through compromise regulations, subsequent to which no further relevant arguments were put forward."@en1
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