The loose cannon of the rule of law is unleashed. Everyone take cover!

At the plenary session of the European Parliament, MEPs debated yesterday about how to strengthen administrative cooperation between tax authorities of Member States. Fidesz MEP Enikő Győri pointed out: “It is damaging to the entire EU that under the disguise of further development, the left now wants to sacrifice technical improvements being in the interest of all of us on the altar of ideological warfare. Should this report be adopted on Wednesday, its new prescriptions would create a situation where Member States being currently subject to the Rule of Law procedure were to be simply excluded from the exchange of information between tax authorities. This development would only favour tax fraudsters. Fortunately, Parliament’s opinion on this issue is not binding”.

MEP Enikő Győri emphasized: “Tax policy issues fall within the competence of the Member States. However, administrative cooperation between national tax authorities and the exchange of basic tax data between Member States have had tangible results for years and this procedure is of mutual benefit to all EU countries. It is in our common European interest to maintain this effective cooperation and thus to combat tax evasion and tax fraud”.

The Fidesz MEP underlined: “A couple of months ago, the European Commission elaborated a reasonable proposal in order to enhance administrative cooperation in tax issues among Member States. The duty of MEPs in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee would have consisted in taking on board all sound and acceptable elements of this proposal and to do their outmost in order to protect the interests of European citizens and businesses. However, based on a proposal submitted by EPP Group MEP Othmar Karas, Member States which are subject to the rule of law procedure should now be excluded from the normal data exchange procedure of tax authorities. This is in total contradiction with the EU rquirement for tax transparency and would allow the tax information flow between Member States to be blocked at any time upon political motives. This would only help tax fraudsters and tax evaders”.

This shows clearly that the Brussels bubble is on the verge of losing completely its sense of reality: how could we expect these politicians to start working on the real problems that affect the real life of citizens and businesses all over Europe? The permanent attempts to import ideological battles in each and every policy field is not only damaging to all Member States and to the spirit of European solidarity in general, but it already represents a fundamental threat to cooperation in the most basic issues among the 27 countries that constitute the EU. Speaking of efficient tax cooperation, I have not yet seen any EP report until now on how to suppress the possibilities of real tax evasion like the one revealed by OpenLux, which concerns about 55.000 offshore companies in Luxemburg with a total asset value exceeding 6.500 billion EUR”, pointed out the Hungarian MEP.