Dear Interested,
Dear opponents of financial crime,
In the meantime, the services of the European Parliament have published the resolution passed last Thursday including all the amendments. A very broad majority was in favour. The resolution contains on green initiative among other things the demand for a European investigation of dividend arbitrage deals such as Cum-Ex and Cum-Cum as well as the demand for a European financial police.
Below, I have summarized for you the most important demands of the resolution.
The resolution as a whole can be found here:
https://sven-giegold.de/cum-ex-resolution-en/
My political assessment of the resolution here: https://sven-giegold.de/eu-wide-investigation-cum-ex/
With delighted green greetings
Sven Giegold
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The main demands of the resolution:
European inquiry
- Requests the European Securities and Markets Authority and the European Banking Authority to conduct an inquiry into dividend arbitrage trading schemes such as cum-ex or cum-cum in order to assess potential threats to the integrity of financial markets and to national budgets; to establish the nature and magnitude of actors in these schemes; to assess whether there were breaches of either national or Union law; to assess the actions taken by financial supervisors in Member States; and to make appropriate recommendations for reform and for action to the competent authorities concerned;
- Recommends that the inquiry establish what failed in the coordination and surveillance tasks of financial supervisors, stock exchanges and tax authorities across the Member States which allowed these tax theft schemes to continue for years despite having been identified;
- Calls on the EU and Member State authorities to investigate the role of insurance funds and insurance supervisors in the scandal;
European exchange of information on tax matters
- Urges all Member States’ tax authorities to nominate Single Points of Contact (SPoCs) in line with the OECD’s Joint International Taskforce on Shared Intelligence and Collaboration, and calls on the Commission to ensure and facilitate cooperation between them, with a view to making certain that information on cases with cross-border relevance is shared rapidly and efficiently between Member States;
- Calls on national tax authorities to reap the full potential of DAC6 with regard to the mandatory automatic exchange of information in the field of taxation in relation to reportable cross-border arrangements, including the use of group requests; calls, furthermore, for DAC6 to be strengthened in order to require the mandatory disclosure of dividend arbitrage schemes and all information on capital gains, including the granting of dividend and capital gains tax refunds;
EU initiative for a European Financial Police and cross-border tax investigations
- Calls on the Commission to start working immediately on a proposal for a European financial police within the framework of Europol with its own investigatory capacities, as well as on a European framework for cross-border tax investigations;
EU initiative for a European Financial Intelligence Unit against money laundering
- Asks the Commission to consider a legislative proposal for an EU Financial Intelligence Unit, a European hub for joint investigative work and an early warning mechanism;
Revision of the parent-subsidiary directive
- Calls on the Commission to revise the directive on the common system of taxation applicable in the case of parent companies and subsidiaries of different Member States in order to tackle dividend arbitrage practices;
European review of double taxation agreements
- Urges the Commission to assess and the Member States to review and update bilateral taxation agreements between Member States and with third countries to close loopholes that incentivise tax-driven trading practices with the purpose of tax avoidance;
European protection for whistleblowers
- Stresses the need for the protection of whistle-blowers who disclose information for example on tax fraud and tax evasion at national and EU level; invites anyone who has information of value for the public interest to report it, either internally, externally to the national authorities or where necessary to the public; calls for the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on protection of persons reporting on breaches of Union law to be swiftly adopted considering the opinions adopted in the different European Parliament committees;