MEPs unanimously expressed indignation and disgust at the Pandora Papers revelations and criticised governments’ woefully inadequate response for over a decade.
Speaking
during a debate in plenary with representatives of the Council and the
Commission just days after the leaks were published, the latest in a
long series of investigative works documenting tax avoidance and tax
evasion, MEPs denounced EU governments for allowing taxes to be dodged en masse due to their inability to properly reform outdated tax laws.
Although a few speakers did point to the
limited progress made in improving EU laws, they too joined the rest of
the MEPs in accusing member state governments and the Commission of
doing far too little for far too long to close loopholes that have been
known for a long time.
In particular, MEPs pointed out the irony of finance ministers choosing to remove countries from the EU’s already unambitious black list of tax havens
in the same week that the Pandora Papers came to light. In their view,
this proved how unfit this list was, and how urgently the process to
compile it needs to be updated.
They also stressed that an international
agreement on business taxation must be urgently concluded and quickly
translated into EU law. Finally, many MEPs pointed out the conflict of
interest that high-level politicians mentioned in the Pandora Papers,
such as EU ministers or heads of state, are facing, as they also sit in
the fora that are meant to tackle tax evasion and tax avoidance.
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