Speech: Remarks by Vice-President Dombrovskis at the ECOFIN press conference

Thank you, Edward, for your remarks and for today's productive ECOFIN Council.

I would like to congratulate the Maltese and the previous Slovak presidencies on paving the way for this morning's agreement on new rules to tackle tax avoidance.

The measures follow on from the deal already reached last summer to block the most common loopholes used by multinationals for tax avoidance in the EU, with the Anti- Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD).

Member States subsequently asked for a Commission proposal to extend these measures outside the Union, the so-called "ATAD 2".

This latest binding measure would put end to the mismatches between EU tax systems and those of non-EU countries that are commonly used by corporate tax dodgers.

We were very happy to see this deal coming so soon after the original Commission proposal.

Clearly, tax avoidance is an issue about which governments and Member States feel very strongly.

For us, it's another piece of the puzzle in ensuring effective taxation for big companies in the EU.

It's true that there were a couple of issues on which compromises were made. But overall, I think we have come to a positive and concrete result that should give another tool to tax authorities to recoup lost revenues.

Staying on our anti-tax avoidance agenda, ministers briefly discussed the state-of-play of the EU process towards a list of non-cooperative jurisdictions. The final touches were put in place for the screening process to continue.

What is important now is that the work gets going in earnest. The final list must be published by the end of this year to keep up the pressure on those countries that are not playing by the rules.

Finally, on the EU budget, we welcome the positive recommendation of the Council in respect of the implementation of the 2015 budget.

We broadly share the priorities underlying the 2018 budget guidelines agreed today by the Council. Those being:

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  Supporting the recovery in Europe;
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  Addressing humanitarian and security challenges both within and outside the EU boarders; and
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  Honouring commitments made under the current and previous programming periods.

We will take these guidelines into account when preparing the 2018 draft budget and the Commission looks forward to fruitful cooperation with all actors involved.

Thank you.

SPEECH/17/325