The European Commission today presented a proposal for a Pan-European private pension product. The draft regulation for European pension products called “PEPP” (Pan-European Pension Product) is intended to set European rules and quality standards for retirement provision products. This would make these pension products comparable and transferable to other countries across the EU. Insurance companies, […]

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced today that the EU Commission imposed a record penalty of 2.42 billion euro on Google. As the European competition authority, the EU Commission accuses Google, among other things, of preferring its own services in the shopping search engine and thus to discriminate against those of others. The EU Commission […]

The European Commission will today present its proposal to create an obligation on intermediaries to systematically report to tax authorities any cross-border schemes with potentially aggressive tax planning elements they offer to their clients. A report from the Greens/EFA group in January 2017 showed the extent of the role of intermediaries in tax evasion and […]

The European Parliament’s Conference of Presidents has today adopted the Parliament’s mandate to begin negotiations on the new Transparency Register for lobbyists with the European Commission and the European Council. Conservatives (EPP), Social-Democrats (S&D) and Liberals rejected any obligatory lobby transparency inside Parliament as Greens/EFA had demanded. The mandate, which was only made public through […]

On Wednesday, the European Parliament will hold a plenary debate with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on the rule of law in Malta. The Greens called for this debate linked to the Panama Papers as two members of the government (Keith Schembri, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, and Minister for Tourism Konrad Mizzi) were revealed […]