Activities of Manon AUBRY related to 2022/2080(INI)
Plenary speeches (1)
Lessons learnt from the Pandora Papers and other revelations (debate)
Amendments (16)
Amendment 4 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas the Pandora Papers were a massive data leak, which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists began publishing on 3 October 2021, documenting the beneficial owners of corporate entities established in secrecy jurisdictions; whereas the data leak reportedly concerns more than 330 politicians and public officials from almost 100 countries, including 35 current or former heads of state or government;
Amendment 6 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
A a. whereas, according to the EU Tax Observatory, the amount of financial wealth held in tax heavens in 2017 was EUR 7 900 billion; whereas this amount is equivalent to 8 % of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP); whereas the result is a loss of tax revenue of around EUR 155 billion per year worldwide;
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
B a. whereas a number of politicians, including EU high-level decision-makers, have also featured in the Pandora Papers, and calls on the authorities of the Member States involved to carry out appropriate investigations into any wrongdoing; deplores, in particular, the mention in Pandora Papers with reported links with offshore dealings of politicians such as Nicos Anastasiades, the President of Cyprus and who sits on the European Council; Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch Minister of Foreign affairs; Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan; Milo Đukanović, the President of Montenegro; former British Prime Minister Tony Blair; John Dalli, former Maltese Minister and former EU Commissioner; and Andrej Babiš, former Prime Minister of Czechia;
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Regrets the fact that only 10 Member States have passed legislation to transpose the Whistleblowers Directive7 , 15 are still in the process of doing so, and two have taken no or minimal action; Calls on all Member States to transpose the directive into national law; _________________ 7 Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law, OJ L 305, 26.11.2019, p. 17.
Amendment 57 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Points out that the so-called big four major accountancy firms – PwC, EY, Deloitte and KPMG – account for 87 % of the global tax advisory market share8 ; stresses that this position in the market power gives them more influence power; _________________ 8 ‘Global tax advisory revenues top $20bn’, Accountancy Daily, 28 January 2019.
Amendment 63 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Points out that global professional services firms possess a capacity as ‘career hubs’, where 68 % of transfer pricing professionals in multinational corporations had worked in a global professional services firm before11 ; is aware of examples of tax authority officials going on to work in such firms or multinational corporations immediately after; calls on the Member States to regulate the phenomenon of revolving doors, including cooling-off periods, with regard to officials in tax administrations, including adopting rules to prevent revolving doors and an array of efficient enforcement mechanisms ranging from cooling-off periods, to mandatory recusal and forbidding former employees to endorse positions that are inherently at odds with the interests, independence and impartiality of the institution and the efficient enforcement of the law; _________________ 11 Christensen, R.C., ‘Transnational Infrastructural Power of Professional Service Firms’, SocArXiv, 9 September 2022.
Amendment 66 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to recognise and address the risks of conflicts of interest stemming from the provision of legal advice, tax advice and auditing services when advising both corporate clients and public authorities; reiterates its calls on the Commission to propose measures to clearly separate accountancy firms from financial or tax service providers as well as all advisory servicefollow the recommendations of Corporate Europe Observatory by implementing measures such as not allowing big accounting companies to receive public contracts for tax-related studies and impact assessments, ending privileged access, and implementing tougher rules regarding the revolving door between tax intermediaries and the European institutions, including on secondments and internships;
Amendment 72 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7 a. Notes that new self-regulating instruments may appear in tax advising service industry, such as the implementation of ethics quality bar; Calls, however, on EU Member States to ensure that tax advisors are legally liable for promoting and advising on practices that violate the law, and require tax advisors to publish a detailed outline of all types of cross-border tax schemes;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11 a (new)
Paragraph 11 a (new)
11 a. Highlights, furthermore, that Member States should be entitled to fight back tax avoidance practices by implementing countermeasures such as non-deductibility or limited deductibility of costs (interests, royalties and services payments),withholding measures, limitation of participation exemption or special documentation requirements;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 a (new)
Paragraph 12 a (new)
12 a. Notes that the EU Fiscal Observatory estimates that preferential schemes generate a loss of revenue of over EUR 4.5 billion per year for the EU as a whole and, moreover, ranks the Italian and Greek HNWI regimes, the Cypriot high-income regime, and the Cypriot, Greek, and Portuguese pension schemes as the most harmful;
Amendment 104 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12 b (new)
Paragraph 12 b (new)
12 b. Stresses the transformative nature of these tax regimes and the need for a continuous assessing of their potential harmful impact; Regrets that some Member States are ending Golden Visa schemes at the same time that special tax regimes for Digital Nomads are being created;
Amendment 121 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14 a. Deplores the use of harmful tax practices by the Member States, which are a root cause of tax evasion and avoidance, as further exposed by the Pandora Papers; supports an extension of the EU tax haven blacklist to cover EU tax havens, such as Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Cyprus;
Amendment 144 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Welcomes the Commission proposal for a Council directive laying down rules to prevent the misuse of shell entities for tax purposes and amending Directive 2011/16/EU14 ; calls on the Council to swiftly adopt the proposal once Parliament has submitted its opinion; stresses, nonetheless, that in order to have an effective impact in the fight against tax evasion, the directive has to include proper economic criteria to assess if a company is or not a shell company, for instance: profitability per employee and per assets, the productivity per employee and the turnover on assets; moreover, recalls the necessity of appropriate consequences if an undertaking does not meet the minimal substance criteria and does not provide evidence of not serving merely for tax advantages purposes, namely the denial of the certificate of tax residence and other dissuasive sanctions; _________________ 14 COM(2021)0565.
Amendment 149 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16 a. Notes that the Pandora Papers identified examples of individuals circumventing BO transparency in Member States; Calls on the European Commission to expand the scope of registers of BOs to require Member States to establish fully public, freely-accessible, machine-readable registers of BOs that include companies, trusts and similar legal structures; Calls on the European Commission to reduce the shareholding threshold to ensure that all beneficial owners are required to register their interests and ensure that any natural exercising control also qualifies as beneficial owner;
Amendment 154 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 b (new)
Paragraph 16 b (new)
16 b. Calls for an international implementation of a Global Assets Registry as defended by the G20 and stresses the EU Fiscal Observatory's defense of of an European Assets Registry;
Amendment 158 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Is deeply disappointed by the failure of finance ministers to adopt the much-needed reform of the Code of Conduct for Business Taxation on 7 December 2021, after several unsuccessful attempts; condemns Hungary and Estonia, in particular, for blocking the reformWelcomes that the EU finance ministers agreed on the reform of the mandate of the Code of Conduct Group on the 8th November 2022; recalls that this reform is a slight improvement on the definition of harmful corporate tax regimes; deplores however that the definition of harmful tax regime remains vague, and only applies in the EU and to new national tax regimes; recalls that the process still lacks transparency; recalls that the European Parliament is still waiting for the reform of the criteria governing the EU tax haven list;