This Tuesday, the European Parliament voted on the initiative report “Towards a pan-European covered bonds framework”. Covered bonds are debt securities issued by a bank or mortgage institution and collateralised against a pool of assets. Holders of covered bonds are protected twice, through recourse against the issuer and the collateral, a safety mechanism known as […]
Multinational corporations: Country-by-country reporting is a major win for tax justice
The European Parliament has today backed proposals for public country-by-country reporting of financial information, a major tool in the fight for tax justice. Public country-by-country reporting would require large multinationals operating within the EU to publish financial information for all territories in which they operate, including those out-with the EU. The Greens/EFA group has supported […]
A Pan-European pension: Europe’s consumers profit from the first European financial product
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, […]
Record penalty for Google: Europe proves its muscles against abuse of market power in the digital sector
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 […]
Tax justice: Member States must follow Commission’s lead and tackle tax advisors’ and lawyers’ aggressive methods
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 […]
Lobby transparency: MEPs reject to bring their own house in order
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 […]