Sozialdemokraten und LuxLeaks - Worten sollten Taten folgen

• Louise Schmidt

Am 4.11.2015 veröffentlichte die britische Tageszeitung The Guardian einen Artikel/Aufruf anlässlich des ersten Jahrestags der LuxLeaks-Enthüllungen. Bei LuxLeaks geht es um geheime Steuerdeals großer Konzerne mit mehreren EU-Staaten, die der Allgemeinheit und den ehrlichen Steuerzahlern Milliarden gekostet haben. Der Aufruf im Guardian ist inhaltlich voll unterstützenswert. Fabio De Masi hat sich gefreut, dass beispielsweise der Vositzende der Sozialdemokraten im Europaparlament (EP), Gianni Pitella, den Aufruf unterschrieben hat. Gewundert hat er sich aber, dass Pitellas Fraktion im EP allerdings eine Verlängerung des Mandats des Sonderausschusses TAXE bislang nicht unterstützt hat (und die Einrichtung eines echten Untersuchungsausschusses zuvor gänzlich verhinderte). Deshalb hat Fabio De Masi Herrn Pitella am 13.11.2015 eine offene Email geschrieben, dass er sich freue, dass auch die Sozialdemokraten echte Aufklärung wünschen und deswegen sicher auch einer Verlängerung des TAXE-Mandats zustimmen werden. 

Hier dokumentieren wir die offene Email (auf Englisch):

Dear Mr. Pittella,

I learned with great interest about your open letter that was recently published in the Guardian. There you rightfully complain that one year after Luxembourg Leaks the European Commission and EU Member States have yet not acted sufficiently on tax dodging of multinational corporations. The letter bears the signature of a long list of politicians and scientists with high integrity.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/04/a-year-after-luxleaks-it-is-high-time-for-eu-action-on-corporate-tax-dodging

I fully agree with the above mentioned analysis as I am sure most of the citizens and hard working taxpayers in the EU do.

You will be aware of the difficulties our special committee TAXE encountered with regard to document access, the remaining inconsistencies in explanations provided by Mr Juncker in his testimony to the committee and above all the specific (but by no means exclusive) responsibility of key EU leaders such as Mr Juncker and the President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, for preventing earlier action aggressive and harmful tax competition by the Council in their past and current role(s) as national leaders and ministers.

Hence, I allow myself to address an open e-mail to you and I ask you to ensure that your political group will support a renewed or prolonged mandate of the TAXE committee for which the support of S&D is crucial.

This would also reflect the broad political consensus expressed in its draft report that the mandate of TAXE could yet not be fulfilled. I assume that you will agree with me that
the European Parliament and its TAXE committee have a crucial role to play in pressuring the Commission and the Member States to deliver on combating abusive tax measures while citizens suffer from austerity and cuts in housing, healthcare, education and general public investment all of which add to depression and a failure to adequately manage the historic challenge of the refugee crisis.

I hope we can count on your support to address a problem that nobody better described than Mr Juncker himself when he suggested to re-brand " Luxembourg Leaks" as "EU leaks" instead.

Kind Regards,

Fabio De Masi