Speech: Opening remarks by Vice-President Katainen at the informal ECOFIN

Tax avoidance

Ministers this morning took stock of recent progress on fighting tax avoidance at the EU level and exchanged views on the topic of tax certainty. Today's discussion is timely. It comes ahead of my colleague Pierre Moscovici's proposal later this autumn on the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) which will help enormously to curb aggressive tax planning. New rules are needed to eliminate the mismatches and loopholes between national systems, which companies can currently exploit. What's clear is that with every new case of unfair tax practice or abuse, public frustration grows.

Governments will need to look closely at their current tax systems and assess whether they are fit for purpose and meet public expectations of greater fairness. The proposal is also business-friendly: it will ease the administrative burden and cost on companies operating in the EU. It will provide more tax certainty for businesses and our Member States alike. The EU has been at the forefront in dealing with tax avoidance on the global stage. We’ve made unprecedented strides with binding rules on transparency and closing of tax loopholes adopted in record time. Finally, the progress we expect to make on our list of tax jurisdictions who don't play by the rules will allow the EU to keep up the international pressure that is so badly needed.

Investment Plan

EFSI i has been up and running and it is doing very well. As you know, EFSI's target is to mobilise mostly private investment worth 315 billion euros over three years by mid 2018. EFSI is in good speed: 37% of EFSI's financing capacity has already been used. This means that both infrastructure and innovation window and the SME window together have used around 20 billion euros of the EU guarantee which will mobilise 115 billion euros in real investment on the ground. We have 97 projects, which are either infrastructure or industrial investments, and close to 200 financing agreements our funds and intermediary banks on SME financing. Around 200,000 SMEs will get benefit due to these agreements. This is state of play today.

The Advisory Hub is up and running: we have had around 200 requests, half of which are from private entrepreneurs for technical assistance, such as how to improve the quality of their project. Project Portal has started well and I encourage you to visit it. 103 projects. Globally open website, public and private promoters can send projects to the Portal and get global visibility. Soon we will add another 100 projects, and those are also available for all the interested investors. I visited Hong Kong a couple of months ago, and I was positively surprised that Hong Kong fund managers were aware of the Portal. They said one of the first things they do in the morning is look at the website because they want to find the best projects before their competitors find them. So it's also very positive to look at the results. The most attractive projects in the Portal in terms of number of visits are Greek ones. There are Greek private and public projects which seem to attract private investors so that is very nice. Also lots of projects from Bulgaria, from Baltic countries and some projects from Spain and UK.

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