Commission to hand over tax documents to MEPs

The European Commission is to hand over sensitive documents on tax rulings to MEPs investigating tax deals across the bloc.

In a letter to Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the Commission, agreed to disclose some 5,500 documents from the Code of Conduct Group on Business Taxation, set up between EU countries and the Commission in 1997 to discuss tax competition cases and tax rulings.

“I have the pleasure to let you know that member states are favorable to the release of the documents,” Juncker wrote.

Members of the Parliament’s special committee on tax rulings have a particular interest in getting documents from the business taxation group but some EU countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg, had been reluctant to disclose such data.

“We have a suspicion that the group that was set up to prevent tax roguery is in fact just a fig leaf covering a lack of activity,” said Burkhard Balz, a German MEP from the center-right European People’s Party. “Now we want to see what really happened in this group.”

“The release of the secret documents is good news in the fight against tax avoidance in Europe,” said Sven Giegold, a German Green MEP and member of the TAXE committee.

The Commission made it clear that some of the documents are of a sensitive nature and will only be viewed behind closed doors.

“In order not to undermine the decision-making process, documents or parts of documents that relate to issues which are still under discussion at the code of conduct, can however only be made available in a meeting in camera,” said Juncker’s letter.

The TAXE committee was set up in February 2015 after the “Luxleaks” revelations about tax deals struck between multinationals and the government of Luxembourg while Juncker was prime minister.

Fabio de Masi, a German far-left MEP, last month challenged the European Commission at the General Court of the EU on its access to documents policy. The far-left GUE/NGL group to which De Masi belongs commissioned a study by two academics from the University of Bremen which argues that the Commission failed to fulfill its obligations to hand over documents, such as reports and minutes of meetings, requested by lawmakers.

This article was updated to correct the date of the formation of the TAXE committee.

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