FISCALIDADE - Related Opinions
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The EESC proposes launching a European pact to effectively combat tax fraud, evasion and avoidance and money laundering. The Committee calls on the European Commission to promote a political initiative involving national governments and the other European institutions in achieving this goal, fostering the consensus needed for this and involving civil society. Cooperation between Member States should be the main pillar of the pact. The Committee urges the European institutions and the Member States to provide the financial and human resources required for the effective implementation of existing European legislation and to agree on a commitment to adopt all necessary new legislative and administrative measures to effectively combat tax offences and bad practices, money laundering and the activities of tax havens. This requires permanent evaluation of the outcome of implementing each measure.
The EESC believes that there are well-founded reasons to establish uniform rules within the EU to combat global warming and based on these to embark on international discussions with other trading blocs. Furthermore, the Committee deems that, in the future, it could be useful and necessary to also devise new taxation measures that can supplement the current emissions trading system and national carbon taxes in order to achieve an effective and symmetrical policy framework to tackle the increasing amount of CO2 emissions.
While acknowledging the progress made by the Commission in taking account of smaller and less complex banking institutions in its recent regulatory measures, the EESC believes it would be useful to further increase the proportionality of banking rules, without sacrificing the effectiveness of prudential rules.
The EESC endorses the recent decision to push back the date for implementing the Basel III accord, and feels that when the time comes, the new provision on capital requirements should be transposed in a way that caters properly for the diversity of banking business models in Europe.
The EESC strongly supports the Commission's proposal – Next Generation EU – as a specific tool for a quick and effective recovery.
The EESC takes a very positive view of the Commission's two main decisions:
- to introduce an extraordinary financial recovery instrument as part of the multiannual financial framework
- to raise common debt, which will be repaid over a long period of time, and prevent the extraordinary financial burden from falling directly on the Member States in the short run.
The EESC strongly welcomes the fact that the newly proposed instrument should be closely coordinated with the European Semester process, and furthermore welcomes the Commission's proposal to introduce additional genuine own resources based on different taxes (revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System, digital taxation, large companies' revenues).
Taxation policies are fundamental for the SDGs as they determine the economic environment in which investment, employment, and innovation take place while providing the government with revenues for financing public spending. Businesses are global drivers of productivity, inclusive economic growth, job creation, investment and innovation. Private sector expertise holds the keys to unlocking many of the challenges linked to sustainable development. Tax bases should be as broad as possible allowing tax rates to be as non-distortive as possible.