Madam President, so that we can gauge the importance of this debate, I should like to start by reminding you of the remote origins of this proposal for a directive; the Directive on the liberalisation of capital movements of 24 June 1988. The authors of this directive were aware of the opportunities arising for the evasion of national capital gains tax as a result of this liberalisation, by investing in a country other than the investor’s country of residence; to summarise this situation, we can say that the risk was, and continues to be, that each Member State, each member of the single market that was being set up at that time and is now up and running, would act as a tax haven for the other Member States. This risk, as I said, was highlighted by the authors of the Directive on the liberalisation of capital movements, who called on the Commission and the Council to legislate on this matter, the fiscal aspect of the liberalisation of capital movements, within one year, that is to say, in 1989. The Commission, and the Commissioner responsible, Mrs Scrivener, presented its proposal on time, but this proposal, basically consisting of the introduction of a deduction at source – withholding tax – for payments to residents in other Member States, was not accepted by the Council and was rejected, and became a sort of abortive legislation. In 1997, the Commission made a new proposal, within the so-called Monti package, based on the coexistence model, on which Parliament was able to draw up a report, but at the end of the day this did not receive unanimous support from the Council either. The next step in this process is the Santa María de Feira Agreement, in which the European Council – that is to say the Heads of State and Government – taking a proposal from the Ecofin Council, reached a political agreement in principle on the basis of the points I will now explain. Firstly, the Member States would be committed to setting up a system for information exchange with regard to the payment of interest to a resident of another Member State, that is to say, this would involve the lifting of banking secrecy. Secondly, and as an exceptional and transitional system, it has been stated that certain States, Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg to be precise, should apply, in place of this information exchange – in other words, instead of the lifting of banking secrecy – a system for deduction at source. Finally, the implementation of the whole of this legal framework was dependent and still is dependent on negotiations with third countries, such as Switzerland, the United States and Andorra, for the application of equivalent measures, and the application of the same measures by the Member States in territories dependent on those Member States, such as the Channel Islands. Our opinion on the proposal for a Directive applying these Feira guidelines is entirely positive. We believe, in general terms, that this is in line with the approach taken by the OECD, which is, at this time, the most active forum for discussion in this field. The main problem with this scheme, and I will conclude on this note, Madam President – and this cannot escape anyone’s attention – are the negotiations with third countries. In other words, the problem is how to get Switzerland to lift its banking secrecy. However, at the risk of appearing to be a naive optimist, I should like to remind you that everything in life is subject to change and that not even Swiss banking secrecy is what it once was. I should specifically like to draw your attention to the following fact; the United States has been able, by means of an internal regulation, to implement a regulation, the so-called Qualified Intermediary Agreement, by virtue of which the Swiss banks and those from other countries are obliged to communicate to the Internal Revenue Service profits made by an American client – a US person – from assets which are also American, to lift banking secrecy with regard to these payments or even to apply a deduction at source of 30%. Nobody can escape the fact that this regulation can be avoided simply by investing in non-American assets. Recognising that the cases are not precisely the same, with regard to the fight against terrorism, in this case we also find ourselves up against the limitations of the unilateral approach in the fight against improper practices, in this case tax evasion at international level. For this reason, I must emphasise the positive contribution a joint action by the European Union and the United States could make in this area. We believe that this should be the path to follow in negotiations with the United States and with other countries. We have faith – and on this note I shall end, Madam President – in the Commission’s ability, and that they will know how to provide the impetus for these negotiations, which will provide a solution to this problem of the taxation of savings, which, to tell the truth, should have been resolved some time ago.

Political group: PSE