WRITTEN QUESTION P-0899/00

by Theresa Villiers (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(16 March 2000)

Subject: Taxation Policy Group

1. Could the Commission please indicate the remit and composition of the Taxation Policy Group?

2. What was discussed at the tenth meeting of the Taxation Policy Group held on 2 March 2000, what conclusions were drawn, and who attended this meeting?

3. When were previous meetings of the Taxation Policy Group held, what was discussed at those meetings, and what conclusions were drawn?

4. What future meetings of the Taxation Policy Group have been scheduled, and what matters are due to be discussed at forthcoming meetings?

5. In the interests of transparency, will the Commission provide Parliament with summary reports of these meetings as well as any documents on which the discussions have been based?

Answer given by Mr Bolkestein on behalf of the Commission

(11 April 2000)

1. The Taxation Policy Group is a group of personal representatives of the Ministers of Finance (two respectively), who look at European taxation issues beyond the concrete proposals under discussion in the Council. The group enables the Commission and the Member States to take a strategic overview of taxation policies and to ensure the necessary links between taxation and other policies. The group is chaired by the Commissioner responsible for taxation.

The group was set up following the Commission report of 22 October 1996 on the development of taxation systems in the European Union(1). In its report the Commission proposed that a more permanent and strategic high level group could provide a much needed overview of tax policy concerns, together with the necessary impulse to tackle major challenges. The endorsement by the European Council in Dublin on 13-14 December 1996 underlined Member States' commitment to this process of increased co-operation. The Taxation Policy Group is the successor of the High Level Group on Taxation which had been created following the Informal Ecofin Council in Verona in 1996.

2. The tenth meeting of the Taxation Policy Group was essentially devoted to a comprehensive discussion on a new strategy to improve the operation of the VAT system within the context of the internal market. This discussion was very constructive and helpful. However, the group did not agree on formal conclusions, as it never does.

3. The previous meetings of the Taxation Policy Group were held on 11 March 1997, 6 May 1997, 20 June 1997, 18 September 1997, 20 October 1997, 24 February 1998, 3 July 1998, 12 November 1998, 8 March 1999, and 2 March 2000.

In the beginning, the work of the group very much focused on question of (harmful) tax competition and culminated in the adoption of the tax package by the Ecofin Council on 1 December 1997. Later meetings touched on a variety of issues, for example: monitoring economic and structural reform; the taxation of supplementary pension and life insurance; electronic commerce follow-up to the inter-ministerial conference in Ottawa on 7 October 1998; taxation of energy products; VAT and SLIM.

4. The next meeting of the Taxation Policy Group will probably take place in early May 2000. It will be devoted to an exchange of views on the review of the code of conduct on business taxation.

5. The basic idea of the Taxation Policy Group is to allow for an informal exchange of views between top officials from the Commission and Member States on important Community tax policy questions without the need to formulate an officially binding position. Therefore, there are neither official summary reports nor conclusions of the meetings. By the same token, it has been agreed by the group not to disclose the short working papers which are occasionally prepared for steering the discussion on specific points. The Commission would however be very pleased to keep the Parliament and more precisely its economic and monetary affairs committee regularly informed about the outcome of the meetings held by the Taxation Policy Group.

(1) COM(96) 546 final.