Together with Philippe Lamberts, Co-president of the Greens / EFA Group in the European Parliament, I sent a letter to EP President Martin Schulzregarding the access to coduments for the TAX2 committee. Please find it here (Download as PDF: Letter to Schulz_ TAX2). You can find his reply below.
Martin Schulz’s reply:
Dear Chair,
Dear Philippe,
Thank you for your email where you raise concerns about TAXE access to documents.
I am well aware of this issue as I was mandated by the TAXE committee to find an arrangement with President Juncker on the EP access to the documents of the Code of Conduct Group on Business Taxation. Following up on this request, I discussed the issue twice with President Juncker and, as you know, exchanged letters in this regard. I agree that Parliament’s access to documents is key, and thus endeavoured to help the TAXE committee with this legitimate concern.
As you rightly point out, President Juncker committed to grant access to the requested documents and I think that the European Parliament should welcome this achievement.
Now I understand that there may be issues with the implementation of the agreement, as it may require additional procedural steps within the Commission. I will definitely raise the issue with President Juncker at the next occasion but I also trust Chair Lamassoure to continue to seek solutions with Commissioner Moscovici.
In the meantime, as you know the Conference of Presidents extended last Thursday TAXE’s mandate for another two months, and also authorised a delegation of the special committee to the US. I am aware that the committee was organising hearings with representatives of multinational companies and tax jurisdictions this week. I therefore believe that TAXE is given the necessary time to produce valuable input and I am glad to see that it is actively gathering useful material to that end.
I wish the committee all success with their work.
Yours sincerely,
Martin Schulz