Dariusz Rosati (PPE). – Madam President, tax transparency has become a crucial issue for EU citizens in recent years. To address this public demand, the Commission came up with a proposal and public country—by—country reporting in 2016 – two years ago. I was the PPE Shadow on this file and in this chaos, after months of hard work, we found the right balance, I think, between the demand for more transparency and protecting EU companies on the other hand. We adopted our decision last year in June.

Now while preaching commitment to this fight for tax transparency, this Presidency has not even called a meeting yet on this very issue. Blocking this dossier simply because Member States cannot agree on the legal base is simply not serious. This is not a directive about tax rates, tax revenues or any fiscal issues; this is a directive about transparency and disclosure. This has nothing to do with the infringement of national powers or national competences, and therefore I call on this Council to swiftly proceed with the work on this directive.