By Pura Peris, Program and Studies, Los Verdes (The Greens) of Spain.
The fight against tax havens must be one of the cornerstones in any political agenda that seeks to seriously change the situation of citizens, thus being the political, economic and ethical priority for the Greens and should be for all who enter representative positions in both national parliaments and the European institutions.
However, apparently we have recently learned by some media that the current President of the European Commission Juncker designed a complex legal framework in Luxembourg, which turned it into a tax haven when he was the Prime Minister.
However, Juncker‘s design in Luxembourg was well-known before the elections took place, and yet the European PP continued with their candidate and social democracy and European liberals supported him to access the EU Presidency.
There are many areas which have attracted many companies in exchange for a ridiculous taxation, which in many cases is less than 1% of the profits. In a report commissioned in 2013 by the European Parliament it is stated that these practices posed about 864.282 million euros a year in losses to the public treasury, and other expert reports held that tax fraud accounts for 8% of GDP worldwide and 12% in Europe.
How do these practices, no matter how much legal architecture they have, fit in with the implacable fiscal adjustment policies that have been required to member countries of the EU at a time of deep economic recession? No way.
Is this the leader the EU nedds in this period characterized by the loss of tax revenue of the Member States?
What project can lead Juncker with any credibility?
What happens with the decision of the 28 end of the fiscal year to curb fraud?
What will he do with the decision taken by the G20 in October this year to curb tax havens?
It is shameful that Juncker says he’ll fight against tax fraud, it is a mockery of the citizens who are suffering to inhuman extremes cuts arising from European demands to be told that it is «a matter of fairness and credibility” to get down to the work in this fight against fraudsters. Who will be, the PP with Juncker at the head, the architect of tax traps? The conservative, liberal or social-democratic legislators who supported him with their votes? Not at all.
Such circumstances do enormous damage to the European project and do nothing but give wings to the Eurosceptic movement and alienate European citizenship from the European institutions, which have always suffered from a problem of democratic credibility, lack of transparency and rigor in their approaches and it is against these harmful neoliberal practices which we must fight. Therefore, from the Greens we demand the resignation of someone who never should have been elected to represent the European citizens.