Who wants to be a tax haven?

A blog from our Tax Justice Campaign

Imagine being on the TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. You’ve reached the last stage and you hope to win the one million Euro prize. All you need to do is answer the following question... What is a tax haven? Is it a country: A. That has issues with tax transparency? B. That provides prefer...

Greens/EFA Round up

Debriefing of the Strasbourg plenary week 12-15 September 2016

Greens/EFA priorities for the Strasbourg Plenary included: Car emissions scandal; Work-life balance; Rule of law in Poland; Situation in Turkey; State of the Union; Social dumping in the EU; Asylum - additional measures for Italy and Greece; Apple tax ruling; Copyright reforms; External investment plan; Nomination for Sakharov Prize 2016; Informal EU Council on security.

State of the Union

European Union still best answer to the challenges we face

Commenting on today's State of the Union address from President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, Greens/EFA co-president Rebecca Harms said: "The European Union, with all its achievements and its shortcomings, is still the best answer to nationalism. We are better able to defe...

The Greens/EFA Co-Presidents' briefing

13.09.2016

VOD press conference 13 September 10:30-10:50

Greens/EFA co-presidents Rebecca Harms and Philippe Lamberts present the key issues of the plenary session and of the European agenda for the Greens/EFA group

Greens’ Petition on Panama Papers handed over to the European Commission

You are more than 530,000 (exactly 533,211 and counting!) to have signed our Panama Papers petition. We started the petition beginning of April to ask the European Union to end shell companies and sanction the banks that helped their clients dodge taxes.

Apple state aid case

record €13 billion fee and lessons for tax justice

30 August 2016 will be an important day in EU-US relations. While France's Secretary of State for Trade announced that France will ask to stop the TTIP negotiations, Commissioner Vestager announced that Ireland gave illegal tax benefits - worth up to €13 billion - to Apple, one of the most emblematic US multinationals.

Apple state aid ruling

EU decision on Apple's tax arrangements a welcome step forwards on tax justice

The EU Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, today presented the results of the proceedings against Ireland for infringements of EU competition law. The ruling has major implications for Apple, who operate a significant portion of their global business through subsidiaries in Ireland, resulting in an effective tax rate of less than 1% on their foreign profits. The Commissioner has ruled that these special conditions are in breach of state aid. As a result of the ruling, the firm will now be required to pay up to €13bn of unpaid tax plus interest.

Tax justice

Video with international sign language and subtitles

Stress test for banks

Taxpayers' money should not be used for bank bailouts

The European Banking Authority (EBA) will tonight publish the results of the 2016 stress test for banks. The EBA carries out the test to assess whether banks hold enough capital to see them through a further worsening of the banking crisis. The stress test results play a crucial role in possible ban...

Offshore Wealth Reconsidered – Tax havens are doing better than might you think

A new report from our Tax Justice Campaign

There are plenty of tax havens around the world, but probably not as many as there have been promises to shut them down. We have looked into whether the amount of wealth hidden in these countries has decreased over the past few years, either because of the financial crisis or because of international actions against tax havens. Spoiler alert: the answer is no!

Panama Papers: European Parliament kicks off its investigation

A blog from our Tax Justice Campaign

The biggest tax scandal of all time – involving both politicians and well-known figures, and triggering a range of investigations – deserved the highest possible response from the European Parliament. That is exactly what the Greens called for immediately after the Panama Papers revelations and what was finally approved at the beginning of June.

Final report on Luxleaks

Who’s to blame and what needs to change

When the Luxleaks scandal broke 18 months ago, the Greens in the European Parliament were the first to call for an inquiry committee to make sure we could properly investigate the revelations.