Plenary focus - March II

The TAX3 report contains plenty of positive elements. It addresses the serious damage caused by tax fraud to our society, as well as criticisms over the role of intermediaries such as banks and tax advisors by calling for serious sanctions against them. The report also acknowledges that EU law has often served to help maintain tax fraud schemes.

It is great that member states will maintain the right to keep regulated prices in their electricity markets which helps to fight energy poverty. Equally, it’s good that the rights of the ‘energy community’ are included for the first time in European legislation. That said, GUE/NGL has been fighting to ban the disconnection of electricity supply to customers, unfortunately the majority in the Parliament and Council voted against it.

The interoperability regulation will connect several EU databases such as SIS, VIS, Eurodac as well as Europol’s databases so that they can be searched through one single interface. Meanwhile, it creates the Common Identity Repository - a massive database containing the biometric data of several hundred million people. That means another €450m funnelled into the global surveillance industry. No!!

If the EU is serious about the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals then at least 40% of Cohesion funding must be included for green and inclusive ‘just transition’ projects. Fossil fuel technology and other ‘dirty investment’ projects must not be eligible. The social inclusion of all disadvantaged groups including migrants, irrespective of their legal status, remains at the heart of GUE/NGL’s demands.