One year after Lux Leaks: TAXE committee still in limbo

• Louise Schmidt

The Conference of Presidents today postponed a decision to prolong the mandate of the European Parliament's Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Measures Similar in Nature or Effect (TAXE) which was set up to shed light on EU member states' sweetheart tax deals with multinational corporations.
 
GUE/NGL's TAXE shadow rapporteur Fabio De Masi comments: "The EPP and S&D are playing games behind closed doors again. On Monday, coordinators of all political groups in TAXE agreed that the job was not done and the committee needed to be extended in order to fulfil its mandate. There was clear political obstruction from the EU Commission, the European Council and EU member states and crucial documents are still lacking. We therefore asked for the report to be labelled interim report in order to allow for substantive add-ons in the next stage. This is what the big groups do not want as they fear the discussion of political responsibility for tax dodging in the EU.
 
"While GUE/NGL would have preferred a true committee of inquiry, we want to use all available tools to end this 'business as usual'. We asked a well-known law professor to prepare a law suit concerning document access at the European Court of Justice. A key priority for us is to summon Jean- Claude Juncker a second time along with the President of the Eurogroup and Dutch Minister of Finance Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Both have been implicated by recent media reports with preventing firm action on corporate tax dodging over many years."