Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-23-Speech-3-016-000"
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"en.20120523.3.3-016-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, all products and services are taxed, so one might well ask why financial transactions should not be taxed also. I can therefore fully understand the idea behind taxing such transactions.
The financial sector has, after all, caused considerable damage in recent years, and is not exactly without blame for the difficult situation that we currently find ourselves in, particularly in Europe. The speculative losses of JPMorgan Chase that recently came to light bear witness once again to the fact that the financial industry really has not yet learnt from past mistakes. It seems that the greed of some players has still not been assuaged.
The Commission has tabled a very creative proposal, and the residence principle that it has proposed has been supplemented by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs with the issuance and the ownership principles. Together, these should actually ensure that the risk of financial transactions being shifted out of the EU to other regions of the world can be relatively well averted. Nonetheless, naturally, there are still issues outstanding.
Unlike the Commissioner, I feel that we should, in fact, exempt pension funds, because I do not see why savers who are putting aside money for their old age should be penalised. Moreover, there are naturally a few questions regarding the practical implementation of how the tax is levied that have yet to be clarified, and last but not least, how the revenue is actually going to be used. What will go to the EU and what will go to the Member States?
In our approach to resolving this, there are two things that we should not lose sight of. Firstly, we must not weaken Europe. Secondly, we must ensure that we do not fragment Europe further. We have to achieve the exact opposite – not fragmentation, but as much progress as possible on the harmonisation of our taxes.
A global introduction of the tax is not feasible at present; we know that. Regrettably, we cannot introduce it EU-wide either. It appears that the British veto cannot be broken. The rapporteur’s suggestion that we proceed now by means of enhanced cooperation does not seem to me to be sufficient. If we were to push ahead with only nine or ten Member States, we would actually be contributing to further fragmentation in Europe. That is not what we want. That is why I feel that as a minimum, we must have all 17 euro area members plus a couple more on board.
We therefore have to look for alternatives that would enable all countries to participate. I feel that we could even take the UK’s stamp duty as a starting point, and then of course expand it and include not just shares, but also bonds, derivatives and professional dealers. If we content ourselves with the current proposal and the mechanism of enhanced cooperation, then I believe we will be going down the wrong route."@en1
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