EP tax investigation

The European Parliament's conference of presidents today failed to agree on extending the mandate of EP's special committee investigating taxation. EP president Martin Schulz and the socialist (S&D) group expressed legal concerns with the extension, despite there being no legal advice to this end from the parliament's legal services. Instead, it was agreed to create a new special committee on taxation to last 6 months, with the political groups now tasked to work on a new mandate. Commenting after the conference of presidents, Greens/EFA president Philippe Lamberts said:

"EP president Schulz has used procedural tricks to prevent the prolongation of the special parliamentary committee investigating taxation. He is clearly more interested in protecting politicians directly implicated in the scandal, like Jean-Claude Juncker and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, instead of ensuring parliament plays its role in investigating the biggest tax scandal in the history of the EU."

Greens/EFA tax policy spokesperson Sven Giegold said:

"We will not accept any weakening of the mandate of the new committee, whose creation will already lead to unnecessary bureaucracy and delay. Parliament's investigation cannot be deemed finished until we have established who bears political responsibility for the billion Euro tax dumping of Google, Amazon, Facebook and hundreds of other multinationals. We will therefore work to ensure this investigation can continue under a new mandate. The current proposal for a mandate from the presidents of the EPP and S&D political groups is totally unacceptable and would downgrade the new committee little more than an information tool. If there is no support for a robust investigative mandate, we will renew our push for a fully-fledged inquiry committee."