Madam President, I would like to express my total support for the rapporteur, Mrs Kauppi’s suggestion, and, consequently, for the Commission proposal, to which the Kauppi report gives its almost unreserved support. We Socialists also wholeheartedly support this Commission proposal. The proposal deals with two very important matters. The first is the issue of tax fraud in a specific area, that of VAT in intra Community and triangular operations. The second issue, which is related to the first, as an instrument in combating fraud – is that of cooperation between public authorities to find a solution to, or at least, to reduce, the level of fraud previously mentioned. Mrs Kauppi gave a perfect explanation of the proposals in her speech and I fully share her sentiments. Having said this, I would like to make two additional comments with regard to the content of this report. The first refers to the validity, today, of the ‘provisional VAT system’, a system which was implemented in 1993 on the completion of the single market, of a strictly provisional nature, even with an expiry date, that has been spun out and which has not been respected, as you are all well aware. I would like to draw your attention to this because the reason we are having to discuss this report and the fraud it deals with today is that, to a large extent, we continue to maintain this provisional VAT system – set up by intra Community operations – which places a burden on a series of operations in the country of destination without having those border controls that were maintained by the system in place before the entry into force of the single market. Clearly, in a definitive VAT system, which is appropriate to the single market, with taxation at source, we would probably not be discussing this issue, because much of this fraud would be prevented at source. This is the first observation that I would like to make with regard to this report. My second observation concerns a very important point, which Mrs Kauppi referred to: the legal base chosen by the Commission to present this proposal for a directive. In my opinion, the Commission’s interpretation of the Treaty has to be applauded, for considering that the base applicable in this case was Article 95, that is to say, for deciding that tax matters can be reduced to matters of substantial, substantive tax law, but not to those of adjective law, to those matters – such as those we are dealing with at the moment – that deal with the management of taxes and the exchange of information between public institutions in the management of taxes. In these cases, it is not really a matter of fiscal law or tax law itself, in the strict sense of the word, reserved for national parliaments and, as a consequence, for unanimity, but of an issue that can be dealt with, as is happening now, by the codecision procedure. I would like to conclude, Madam President, with a piece of advice that stems from my last comment; it would be a good idea if, in the next Convention and reform of the Treaty, the field of tax matters could be defined once and for all and that a precise framework for harmonisation can be established. Naturally, not all tax matters can be harmonised; there are certain areas, such as income tax, that will never be completely harmonised, but there are others – and here I am essentially thinking about the basis for calculating tax on company profits – which should be set up as something that can be harmonised and exempted from the unanimity rule, which would give Parliament the leading role in areas as important as those we are dealing with.

Political group: PSE