Ľudovít ÓDOR

Policy topics Ľudovít ÓDOR is active on

What Ľudovít ÓDOR has said (39)

• “I have two quick questions actually. The first one relates to the fiscal sustainability framework because after many years of switching off the fiscal rules, we are currently in a phase that we are hoping that at least some fiscal rules will be valid for most of the member states because it doesn't seem to be at first sight, but we are still in relatively good years. And these are the years when some fiscal. Sustainability or steps towards fiscal sustainability are in order. So how do you see this period of switching back to a more rules based framework? And the second question relates to the MDI. If you could elaborate a bit more on the potential achievements the Hungarian presidency can have during during this short period of time. Thank you.”
  EU fiscal rules and oversight of national budgets
• “Thank you, Madam Chair. And I also start with thanking the rapporteur for the compromise text. Uh, and in my view, uh, we are clearly heading in the right direction. And a lot of our amendments, uh, were included in the text. And from our perspective, it is quite important to monitor all the most important internal and external risk factors to financial stability. Um, among the internal, uh, factors, I would like to mention a few, some colleagues, uh, already, uh, talked about the importance of non-bank financial institutions and, uh, the lack of sufficient macroprudential instruments to deal with them. Therefore it is uh, uh, needed that, uh, the commission will come up with some, uh, new initiatives have to reduce the risk in this sector. Another important risk factor is still and it is rightly emphasized by, uh, by the compromise text that there is still this sovereign bank nexus. And also the home bias is quite important. So in this regard, we need to finalize the works on the banking union because otherwise, uh, you know, uh, history can can repeat itself on, uh, the, uh, on the more external and global risk factors. I think, uh, uh, some of the colleagues already mentioned, uh, growing, uh, tensions, uh, and, uh, risks arising from, uh, the crypto asset markets where we clearly, uh, need also much better, uh, even data access and monitoring, uh, who is taking those risks? Because if it is in the retail sector, that can, of course, create much more, uh, much more problems.”
  Financial regulation
• “Uh, thank you very much. Thank you for all the presentations. Uh, this is quite a wide range of topics. Uh, I want I would like to, uh, talk about two issues. Uh, the first one is, uh, and the goal of both of the questions is to try to find ways forward, how to proceed in a situation where also politically, it's not, uh, so easy to, uh, have, uh, much less obstacles on the single market in the area of taxation. And the first potential area is, uh, the so-called 28 regime that basically one can imagine, uh, like, uh, Mr. Draghi did in his report that if we choose a small segment of companies where they are not paying a lot of taxes because they are start ups and scale ups, maybe also politically, it is much easier to harmonize at least some aspects of taxation for a special segment of companies. And the second, uh, area of harmonization is that actually, um, if the court cases are not convincing, and also the sovereignty is sometimes going in the other direction. So what are the areas, what are the areas where you see, uh, also politically realistic way of harmonization. Um, of course I buy the argument that we can do a lot in simplifying, uh, the European, uh, tax measures, but it will still not solve all our problems. We will still not be, uh, competitive vis a vis some of other jurisdictions where they are much less obstacles in the taxation area. So the two questions are the first one is, what do you think about the, uh, 28 regime? And what do you think? What are the what are the most uh, uh, you know, uh, most probably, uh, areas for tax harmonisation, not only from an economic perspective, but also from a political perspective. Do you see any uh, so thank you very much.”
  EU competences on taxation
• “Session, and the next step in the process will be the circulation of the draft report to members, which is foreseen for December 2025, and the presentation of the draft report is scheduled for fifteenth of January 2025. Thank you, thank you very much, and we now move to point number six on the agenda, which is amending protocol to the agreement between the European Union and the Principality of Andorra, the Swiss Confederation, the Principality of Liechtenstein, the Principality of Monaco and San Marino on the automatic exchange of financial account information to improve international tax compliance. Quite a long title for it, but I guess the procedure will be a bit simpler, and now I give the floor to Mister Ferber.”
  Anti-money laundering regulation
• “(11:40:17 – 11:41:56): Thank you very much. And I wanted to thank also for the rapporteur for his work on this file. Actually, sometimes it's not easy to reach a compromise if there are really diverse views on some of the issues, and this is the case. So where there is a general support, these are the technical amendments, reduced numbers of indicators. I'm also sympathetic to talk about potential competitiveness indicators. But where the problem is the horizontal principles since some of our colleagues took this idea quite ideologically that this has to do something with, I don't know, the green deal or objectives in this area. But horizontal principles are simple expressions of European values that when we are dispersing our money, we want to respect some important principles for us. So in this regard, we are quite close to the position of the SND group in this regard, and we are not happy to delete all early horizontal principles from the proposal. So that is why we clearly disagree with the rapporteur. Basically, I do not want to repeat some of the arguments already mentioned. So that is our clear political position. Thank you.”
  EU policy on sustainability criteria in public funding
• “Thank you very much. And thank you for the interesting discussion. I guess it was Albert Einstein who said that the hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax. And that was even before transfer pricing rules. So I think we are going in the wrong direction. But more seriously, I have basically just three questions. The first one is if you look at not at the European level, but at national taxation levels, which are the tax systems, which are which are the closest to a kind of an optimal taxation from your point of view. Just focusing on that. On the equity bias, for example, I know that in Estonia they do not have tax on reinvested profits and so on. So is there any kind of a benchmark which you see as an, as an option for if we could agree, which is of course quite hard, but I just wanted to know from a kind of a more academic and practitioner perspective. The second one is is a question for Mr. Ludovici. I hope I pronounce the name rightly. You mentioned that maybe we can have a kind of a second secondary solutions to that via, I don't know, tax credits and other motivations for, for companies to go public. So if you can elaborate a bit more on those proposals and what do you think that is those second best options can achieve in, in the longer term? And my third question is on the international situation because we are talking about a specific issue. Economists can agree on, on this issue quite easily. But also, if we look at the international landscape, there are not too many jurisdictions where there is a kind of an equal treatment of that and interest or debt and equity, interest income and, and gains on equity. So my question would be that is the international or the international cooperation or international organizations like OECD or UN are going in that direction or, or not really at this stage. And we are just talking about the problem. Have to mobilize more equity capital inside the European Union. Thank you.”
  Priorities of taxation policy in the EU
• “Thank you. Thank you for coming and discussing this very important topic. I have a very straightforward question because you mentioned that actually the new package on VAT is a great help, but it is not a panacea. So we need also other instruments in order to fight against VAT fraud. And you talked about a lot of possible avenues we can pursue. But my question is what are, in your view, the 1 or 2 game changer proposals you would advocate for the Commission and also the Parliament to endorse in order to increase your efficiency against the VAT fraud.”
  VAT harmonisation
• “Madam President, commissioner colleagues. In the past, many people across the world dreamt of driving a European car. They signified progress, quality, exclusivity. However, the sector is gradually losing competitiveness. The threat is from state subsidised electric cars from China and privately financed models from the United States. Tariffs from across the Atlantic are also creating trouble for the sector. We have to act and act fast. There are three steps that are essential. Firstly, the European Union will be successful if international trade ceases to be about power games and returns to a rules based order. We need to take advantage of our large market and negotiate confidently. Secondly, networks are key networks of charging stations, electrical, electricity networks, and we will have to make sure that people are able to invest in this technology.”
  Trade relations with China
• “Thank you very much. And thank you for the interesting discussion. I guess it was Albert Einstein who said that the hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax. And that was even before transfer pricing rules. So I think we are going in the wrong direction. But more seriously, I have basically just three questions. The first one is if you look at not at the European level, but at national taxation levels, which are the tax systems, which are which are the closest to a kind of an optimal taxation from your point of view. Just focusing on that. On the equity bias, for example, I know that in Estonia they do not have tax on reinvested profits and so on. So is there any kind of a benchmark which you see as an, as an option for if we could agree, which is of course quite hard, but I just wanted to know from a kind of a more academic and practitioner perspective. The second one is is a question for Mr. Ludovici. I hope I pronounce the name rightly. You mentioned that maybe we can have a kind of a second secondary solutions to that via, I don't know, tax credits and other motivations for, for companies to go public. So if you can elaborate a bit more on those proposals and what do you think that is those second best options can achieve in, in the longer term? And my third question is on the international situation because we are talking about a specific issue. Economists can agree on, on this issue quite easily. But also, if we look at the international landscape, there are not too many jurisdictions where there is a kind of an equal treatment of that and interest or debt and equity, interest income and, and gains on equity. So my question would be that is the international or the international cooperation or international organizations like OECD or UN are going in that direction or, or not really at this stage. And we are just talking about the problem. Have to mobilize more equity capital inside the European Union. Thank you.”
  Priorities of taxation policy in the EU
• “Thank you very much. And thank you for the discussion. Actually, when we ask firms about scaling up, they usually mention two issues. The first one is the legal bureaucratic issues and second one is taxation. So just creating a 28 regime without taxation maybe will not attract so many, so many firms at the end. This is one argument. And the second one is that for me, it would be much better not to discuss the 28 regime at 28 different committees, because at the end, we want to create one regime with all the legal aspects. Insolvency regimes, taxation, everything in one package. Because now firms will not understand what is the value added of of a regime. And in that I agree with Mr. Thomas who mentioned that ex-ante value proposition for them, that these are the savings, these are the features on the approach. I strictly prefer the narrow approach because I think that also politically it is much better to have a narrow regime. These companies usually do not pay taxes in the first 5 to 6 years. So from that perspective, it is not very painful for the ministers of finances to, to agree on, on on something what should be done in terms of taxation.”
  EU competences on taxation
• “Thank you. And thank you for coming and presenting this, uh, study. Um, I have a few questions. Uh, the first one is actually that, uh, when we see the title that the future of tax harmonisation in the EU, uh, not a lot of us would guess that you will deal with these four topics. Uh, we have much more important topics on the agenda. So these are not the most relevant ones from my perspective. But I guess that, uh, maybe these are the least explored ones. Uh, so, uh, I'm not quite sure that even digitalization is, uh, is an issue because that is not a cost of non Europe. Uh, because you can have a terrible system even if you have just one fully harmonised system, but a terrible one with a lot of papers and no digitalization that, you know, that is not a benchmark. So we need to find out the benchmark, what what is a benchmark for these kind of studies. And I think that in that regard, we should look also at international best practices in order to figure out what is the real cost of, uh, you know, not having the, uh, internationally competitive system in the EU. Uh, but having said that, uh, I'm not dissatisfied with the report because I think all the, all these aspects are very useful.”
  EU competences on taxation
• “I will mention three areas very briefly. First one, I think full agreement with compliance issues and also with administration of taxes. One place fully digital English first, whatever. This is very, very important in the 21st century, a second. Second aspect is what can be included in an from a more substantial point of view. I think definitely employee stock options should be there, tax base calculations should be there. Capital gains taxation in order to attract also foreigners to invest in these firms. And maybe this is politically more difficult employee taxation. So one option should be to use the employee taxation where the headquarter is, because usually in these startups, these people are moving around Europe very quickly. And you know, how do we apply telework and whatever. So from that perspective it makes sense to have have that kind of regime. But of course not tax rates, not not the countries should be able to define their own tax regime. So this is, in my view, a kind of a minimum space where we can talk about meaningfully about the potential feasibility of 28 taxation regime.”
  EU competences on taxation
• “Yeah. I have two questions. And not not so easy ones, but I just wanted to know your opinion on that, because it's clear that the sustainability issue is is now on the background. But part of it is, I think due to that we created a room for finance ministers via purchases of government bonds, and we still have like 20, almost 20% of European GDP at the ECB in government bonds and therefore on the market there is much calmer situation because, you know, at face level, the debt level is high in some countries, but still on market there is no huge amount of bonds. We can use that space. So what do you think about it? How can we. Is it is it something which is a good situation that we are? Our only backstop is as a kind of a purchase program right now. And the second question is related to the DSA types of analysis. Because we usually rely on a, a very accounting type of exercise, while life is a bit more complicated. And if you look at I don't know, fiscal limits, then the question is not that if we have 1 or 2% gap and how to fill it, but you can see that politically it's almost impossible in many countries to decrease the expenditure side of the budget. And many countries already have relatively high tax rates, which means that also the Laffer curve doesn't offer a lot of room for maneuver. So just calculating a number is very far from a real situation in many member states. To adjust the budgets on the revenue or expenditure side to achieve sustainability. So what do you think about these questions?”
  EU fiscal rules and oversight of national budgets
• “Thank thank you very much. And thank you, Commissioner, for coming. And thanks for the quite frank assessment. And it seems that the coalition of unwilling is very big at this moment. But, uh, I would advise not to not to give up at this stage. Uh, I have two questions. The first one is related to the 28 regime, because I think that for the capital market, union scale ups, uh, and start ups, uh, it is really a huge burden, not only the legal regime but also taxation issues. So my approach would be to narrow the scope and allow a bit more ambitious regime for the start up community. It is less politically sensitive because they are not paying taxes. Of course, at the beginning of of the life of these companies. So from that perspective, I think it may make sense, maybe even implement some of the proposals which are on the table back door Deborah or something from Revit or hot. So we can we can design something very ambitious. But but in order to be politically realistic, I think that a kind of a step by step modular approach is is the right one. But we need to, uh, we need to, uh, at least uh, highlight or or, uh, present. Uh, what will be at the end of the road? What is the what is the proposal we are, uh, want to achieve? And my second question is, is very easy. Uh, what will be your priority or a kind of a flagship change in this term in the area of taxation? So what do you think is, on the one hand possible and on the other hand can make a big difference. Thank you.”
  Priorities of taxation policy in the EU
• “Dear Vice-President. Commissioner colleagues, the global digital landscape is dominated by giant companies. Despite Europe's enormous consumer base, no company with a valuation over EUR 500 billion was created from scratch in the last 50 years. And there are only two European companies in the global top 20. Start ups are often leaving Europe to scale up elsewhere. What does it mean? Europe failed to build a truly single market for capital. Our goal should be to allow European start ups to seamlessly operate across member states. Full harmonisation went nowhere. We need a special regime for fast growing companies, which is internationally competitive. New legal forms should be just a starting point. We risk another failure if other elements are not sufficiently taken into account, like taxation, employment law or insolvency procedures. Big steps are sometimes necessary. You cannot cross a chasm in two small steps. Thank you.”
  EU Single Market harmonisation
• “Okay, I can start. Okay, colleagues. So after discussing point number four on the agenda now is point number five five, the economic dialogue and exchange of views with Varga Mihaly ECOFIN, President and Minister of Finance of Hungary. Thank you. I would like to welcome. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you. I'd like to welcome Mr. Varga, the Minister of Finance of Hungary, and Mr. Tibor Toth, State Secretary for macro finance and ambassador Oder, the Permanent Representative of Hungary, as well as other members of the delegation. I now switch back to England. Mr. Varga took over the rotating presidency of the Ecofin Council on July 1st, just after the European elections. The start of your presidency therefore coincided with the composition of this new Parliament and its different committees. Mr. Mihai Varga has kindly accepted our invitation to present the priorities of the Hungarian Presidency in the areas of this committee, such as economic and monetary policy, finance and taxation. We count on a good cooperation between our institutions so that we can make progress on ongoing legislative files such as better data sharing benchmarks, labour market statistics on businesses and, to the extent possible, crisis management and deposit insurance review. Trilogues are due to start later this week. We are also interested to hear about your plans more generally. As regards the deepening of the Economic and Monetary Union, the Capital Markets Union and the Banking union before giving the floor to Mr. Varga for five minutes. I would like to explain how the Q&A session will be organised. First round of questions one slot per political group. 1.5 minutes for the question and three minutes for the answer. Second round of questions. We will apply the whole system. One minute for the question and two minutes for the answer. If time allows, additional slots will be allocated on the catch the eye procedure, taking due account of the weightings of each of the political groups. One minute for question and one minute for answer. Now, dear colleagues, let me give the floor to Mr. Varga for five minutes.”
  European Banking Union
• “Uh, so what was the Parliament's opinion before on this file? In its opinion on the 22nd of November 2023, the European Parliament advocated that the EOS should operate transparently and securely. Moreover, it also highlighted that a unified approach between the iOS on the one hand and customs legislation and practice on the other would help bring an end to inconsistencies, errors and double taxation. So that is all what we are doing this to simplify the procedure, to make the collection more effective and to avoid double taxation or not paying taxes at all. Moreover, the European Parliament underlined the need to limit the administrative burden for SMEs and this is a step in that direction. In addition, the Parliament has to assess the advantages and disadvantages of making iOS mandatory. So basically the previous position was also very favourable in this regard. And therefore, in the light of all the above, I am of the view that a simplified procedure without amendments is the relevant procedure for this consultation. Thank you.”
  Overall simplification of regulation in the EU
• “Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the the report and all the efforts to. Have a compromise proposal on the table. This is especially important in this legislative term, since one of the main findings of the Drudge Report was that actually there is no almost no single capital market in the EU, and we need to do a lot more in order to gain breadth and, and that of, of the market in order to have, um, more, uh, risk, uh, friendly environment in order for the more innovative companies to flourish inside the European Union. So from this perspective, I think that we need to, as many others already mentioned, we need to send a clear signal that, uh, this is, uh, one of the most important priorities for for the Parliament and also for the Commission to have a huge, uh, advancement of the, uh, Savings and Investment Union and coming coming from that new acronym, Savings and Investments. Our amendments were focusing mainly on how to promote, uh, better savings inside the European Union and how to create a more investor friendly environment. So, first of all, uh, I think that, uh, we need some broader picture, uh, because without completing the banking union, it will be quite hard to build a functioning, uh, savings and Investment Union, and we need to make sure that the.”
  European Banking Union
• “Mr. Emmanuel Faber is participating in his capacity as chair of the International Sustainability Standards Board. The eSrb was created as the second pillar of the IMF I FRS Foundation. The eSrb is tasked with the development of international sustainability reporting standards. Let me recall the importance of this exchange of views. The IFRS accounting standards, which are developed by the iAsb, may, under the IAEA regulation, be endorsed by the Commission so that they become part of the Union law. They form, therefore, an important part of the EU financial services regulatory framework. While there is no legal mandate for the endorsement of the global sustainability disclosure standards developed by the eSrb, it is important to promote interoperability with its counterpart, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards. This exchange of views therefore ensures the involvement of the Parliament in an early stage of the development of such standards. Let me shortly outline the procedure to be followed for this agenda item. Our distinguished guests will have 15 minutes in total to make their introductory statements. I understand that the agreement between the three chairs is that Mr. Liikanen speaks first for ten minutes, and Mr. Borko and Mr. Faber continue with an intervention of 2.5 minutes each. And this will be followed, as usual, by a question and answer session. So first I would like to give the floor to Mr. Liikanen, please. Thank you, Vice Chair.”
  EU approach to sustainability criteria in private investments
• “Uh, thank you very much. And thank you all for your support. I really think that, uh, in the 21st century. We need much more digital tools to collect European wide taxes, and although this is just a small step in that direction, I hope that the Parliament can approve it and to improve the situation in collecting VAT and more efficiently, and avoid also tax evasion. So thank you very much.”
  VAT harmonisation
• “This exchange of views then forms part of our scrutiny role regarding the governance of the European Statistical Systems. The 2025 Annual report underlines the crucial issue of data quality and reliability in the European Statistical System. In the age of the digital revolution, where digitalisation and privately held data significantly affect the governance of public statistics, the involvement of this committee is important to express early positions on statistical governance, evolutions and upcoming files in statistics, on which we may discuss in the subsequent exchange of views with the Director General of Eurostat. In line with agreed practices. The following procedure will apply. Mr. Camilleri will make a brief introductory statement and this will be followed by a question and answer session. Members will have 1.5 minutes to ask their questions and Mr. Camilleri, three minutes for replying. If time allows, there will be a catch the eye session. Now I would like to welcome once again Mr. Camilleri and I'm giving you the floor, please. Mr. Camilleri.”
  Accounting and auditing of EU budget
• “Even, uh, the network taxation, it will be very important when we will or Member States will try to go away from labour taxation because of the digitalisation of the economy, and they will try to find out what are the what is the potential of having taxes elsewhere, not only in personal income taxation or labour taxation in general, and also for the crypto. It is also important for consumer protection and financial financial sector stability. So I'm not saying that it is not, uh, not useful. I'm just saying that the obvious, uh, the elephant in the room was, was not very much in the report. Uh, and my last comment is that what I felt was lacking, also a kind of a behavioral response is maybe there are no data available. But for me, the most important thing is that if there is a real evidence for jurisdiction, shopping or movements because of changes in taxation. So a kind of a real behavioral aspect. To what extent there is a kind of a mobility because of tax purposes inside, inside the EU. But otherwise, uh, I read the whole report and it was fun to read, actually. So thank you very much.”
  EU competences on taxation
• “Uh. Thank you. Uh, thank you very much. Uh, Mr., uh, Vice President for, uh, for coming. And I would like to ask three questions. Uh, the first one is related to the changes made to the programs, uh, because now we see a lot of, uh, changes in the category of administrative simplification. So is it some kind of new buzzword of watering down the ambitions? Or this is something which really relates to simplification, because in that case, that that is a that would be a good development. And my second question relates to, uh, the transition period that basically, as it stands, it looks like there will be no penalty for, uh, reform reversals after 2026. Would you be so kind to clarify that question? Uh, because it, uh, it makes a huge difference if those countries receiving the money, uh, revise their reform ambitions or, uh, turn the clock back, uh, in, in terms of reforms. And my third question is, uh, about capacity constraints. I see a lot of member states delays in the implementation. Mainly because insufficient capacity constraints. So do you have any ideas how to overcome these difficulties? Uh, because, uh, especially in smaller member states, the parallel uh, using of traditional EU funds and the ARP is, uh, creating some, some problems. So thank you very much for your thoughts on on these three issues. Thank you.”
  Conditions to access EU budget
• “Yeah. Of course. We are not here to ask easy questions so that we are also trying to find this out. We are also trying to find the right balance when we are trying to legislate. My follow up question is, is on the savings and Investment Union, that actually I don't think that we can move forward without also thinking about changes in the regulation. And if we want to create a single market in this, probably we should also create a single point of supervision and a single point of regulation. So because people sometimes see just one side of the equation and not the other one. So what do you think about that?”
  European Banking Union
• “Thank you chair. And I also wanted to thank for the rapporteur for this. Um, um, I must say quite balanced. First draft. So what are the most important factors and priorities we have? First of all, of course there is a quite new geopolitical landscape with many implications for financial stability all over the world and of course, also in Europe. There are threats and opportunities at the. At the same time, the main threats are coming also from potential trade tensions, which can create spillovers from the real economy into the financial sector. But of course, there is an opportunity that actually we can strengthen the international role of the euro because some of the investors are losing faith in in the chaotic US economic policies. The second point relates to the banking sector that actually the report highlights, quite rightly, that we need to fully implement the Basel Free framework. But at the same time, we cannot ignore, uh, the, uh, landscape, the global landscape. And, uh, we will need to be very vigilant. Uh, and, uh, look also at the other side of the Atlantic in order to ensure that our banking sector is competitive, if our main competitors are not willing to, uh, implement those standards fully. But, of course, the first option is the, uh, the full implementation of Basel three. Uh, also some of my predecessor mentioned that the very important risk is the non-bank financial institution sector because of their growing importance all over.”
  Financial regulation
• “(17:10:25 – 17:12:59): Thank you, chair. And on behalf of Gilboye, I would like to thank the rapporteur and his team for their work on this draft report. And, this, any report is an important opportunity to address key areas where a clear regulatory framework is still lacking. It should serve as a starting point for a broader political discussion on the future of digital assets and their potential contribution to the savings and investments union. That said, there remains clear room for improvement. While the draft report and the first compromise amendments are broadly acceptable, they lack ambition and could be further strengthened. On substance, we support a strong language on know your customer requirements and transaction monitoring for crypto assets to address AMLCFT risks. However, we regret that equivalent standards are not applied to tokenized financial instruments. We welcome the clarification that tokenization does not alter the legal nature or economic characteristics of financial instruments. At the same time, we regret that our proposal to further clarify crypto asset categories has not been taken on board. Such clarification would help ensure consistent application across member states, particularly for hybrid products combining features of crypto assets and traditional financial instruments. Regarding stablecoins, while their core function is well captured, the report does not sufficiently recognize their potential, particularly as a complementary payment solution enabling faster and lower cost cross border transactions. This potential must, of course, be balanced against risks to financial stability and monetary sovereignty. We do, however, welcome the call for legal clarification on multi issuance. We also support the need for international standards as stronger global coordination in the regulation and supervision of digital assets is clearly essential and the priority that seems to be shared across political groups. I would like to thank the reporter once again, and, Gilles is confident that in a constructive spirit and with a willingness to compromise, we can bring this work to a successful conclusion. Thank you very much.”
  Regulation of crypto
• “Thank you very much. Mr.. And we are looking forward to the cooperation in the next period. And now I would like to slowly move to the fourth point on the agenda. I guess within 1 or 2 minutes we can make a switch to it. Thank you. Okay, so now we are continuing with more or less the same topic, and it's a pleasure to welcome the Director general of Eurostat, Miss Mariana Costa. For the second statistical dialogue of this term, and as it was extensively discussed, the quality statistics remain crucial for informed decision making. Effective policy implementation and ensuring accountability across the European Union and at the same time, emerging needs continue to require the further development of statistics, such as those supporting the implementation of the EU's revamped economic governance framework, for example on defence financing or statistics for policy areas such as housing, which is a hot topic. Also here in the Parliament. At the EU level, Eurostat continues to advance methodological work and is expected to release a proposal on balance of payments statistics later in the year related to the IMF's seventh Manual of Balance of Payments Statistics at the international level. Last year's revision of the System of National Accounts had the aim to adopt macroeconomic statistics to the evolving structure of the global economy. The revision of national accounts at UN level consequently requires the Adaptation to a legislative proposal of the ESA. Last year, we heard from Eurostat about the ongoing work on the ESA revision at EU level. We are looking forward to receiving more updates today on this issue. Therefore, I will now give the floor to Miss Goceva to present us. Present to us the latest development in the areas of statistical governance, methodology and statistical innovation, and inform us about all upcoming initiatives and activities. As it was the case with Mr. Camilleri, first I will give the floor to Miss Kosova to make an introductory statement of five minutes. So please Miss Kosova.”
  Accounting and auditing of EU budget
• “Good morning, colleagues. Allow me to start this meeting of the econ committee. The first point on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda. I see no objection. So the agenda is deemed adopted. The second point is chair's announcements. I have just a few announcements. The first one is about interpretation. Interpretation is available in 12 languages and information on the econ coordinators decisions and recommendations. The final summary of decisions and recommendations taken at the coordinators meeting of 25th of February, as well as in two written procedures have been made available on E-meeting. If no objections are raised, the coordinators decisions and recommendations will be deemed endorsed. And now we can go to the third point on the agenda, which is exchange of views with Mr. Alfred Camilleri, chair of the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board. I'm pleased to welcome Mr. Camilleri, who is joining us today for our annual exchange of views on the latest ESG AB annual report. The ESG lab's mission is to provide an independent overview of the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice within the European Statistical System, with a view to enhancing the professional independence integrity and accountability of the European Statistical System and the quality of European statistics.”
  Accounting and auditing of EU budget
• “Thank you very much. And I also would like to welcome everybody at this nice tradition. And we are very close to the finish line. And today we are looking forward to hearing from the Commission about the latest state of play of the RF implementation and of course, the various developments which have occurred since our November meeting. We would like to focus especially on the following topics. Major simplifications in the number of milestones and targets to be complemented, as well as a downsizing of the financial envelope available to some Member States through mainly a reduction in the loan component, not in the grant component. Second, Member States progress towards achieving milestones and targets, because in some cases we are close to the half of fulfilled milestones, so it might be good to know whether we can achieve. The full amount at the end. Uh, again, the Commission assessment of current implementation of delays and measures taken to address them, the Commission assessment of the payment request made by the Member States since the last RDD, and the latest revisions of national plans and their implications on the ground. Before we start today's dialogue, let me mention some housekeeping rules. The commissioners will be given seven minutes each for their introductory statements. But of course, as we all know at this moment, only Executive Vice President Fitto is present here. So he will have up to 14 minutes. So, please, Vice President, the floor is yours.”
  Conditions to access EU budget
• “That the Commission will explore the potential costs and benefits of the so-called 28 regime, because otherwise, you know, trying to harmonise, uh, 27 different and fragmented markets. Um, it can take a lot of time, while if we can introduce a regime where, uh, you know, new, uh, new investment opportunities can be explored. And, um, this is for us, uh, a much better way of to build, uh, a truly capital market union or a true, true union on capital markets. Uh, and two, uh, other points very shortly. The first one is that, But of course we need to be more specific also on the retail investment strategy and also on improving financial literacy. So at the end, I just wanted to thank the rapporteur and Madam Chair for the report. And also I think that we are more or less on the same boat with all the political parties except of some sensitive topics. That and I'm looking forward to the new compromises. Thank you.”
  EU Single Market harmonisation
• “Madam president, Commissioner, colleagues, given the current complexity of the global economic environment and heightened geopolitical uncertainty, the European Union should focus much more on policy priorities, which are entirely in its hands. And the single most important among them is the single market. Europe can create a lot of economic momentum from internal sources simply by removing obstacles which lead to fragmentation. Goods, services and capital. All three lose a significant amount of time and money when crossing borders between member states. There is no true European market in many important areas. Fragmentation rules. The savings and investment union is especially important since there are no shortages of savings in the EU. The problem is that there is no mechanism efficient enough to channel available funds towards badly needed productive investments. Unfortunately, progress has been slow. Ambitions are limited and negotiations too long. We cannot blame our competitors for not doing our homework. It is time to act now.”
  EU Single Market harmonisation
• “Thank you. Is Mister Kubin here? No? No. So the next one is actually myself. I'm not going to repeat all the contents of these five files, but my conclusion is that I fully support the rapporteur's conclusion that we should go for a simplified procedure in all five cases. Let's have it as quickly as possible for the voting in the Parliament. The last shadow reporter is Gaetano Peduya. He's not here, he is also not here. Okay. So I see no attention So I see that the shadows agree, or at least the replacements for shadows agree, to adopt the file under simplified procedure without amendments. Are there any objections? No? So if no objections are there, the simplified procedure without amendments is deemed to have been approved and the report will be tabled to the November first plenary, one plenary. Okay. So any other business? Lot of business but not here. So I will conclude with the date of the next meeting. The next committee meeting ECON will be on fifth and sixth of November in Brussels. So thank you for participation and have a nice evening. Thank you”
  Transparency requirements of EU institutions
• “Thank you so much. I hope that the name of the file is longer than the discussion. What we will have about this file. Um, this is, uh uh uh, our, uh, Madam Chair mentioned this is a consultation regarding the VAT in the digital age package and, uh, the original the reason is that the original package contains the proposal to make the import one stop shops mandatory. However, member states rejected it. So this is a kind of a different approach. Not making it mandatory, but to motivate the use of EOS by making suppliers and platforms liable for import VAT. And if they do not use the EOS, uh, then of course, of course they need to appoint uh, uh tax uh representative or uh, they should register in every country, which is extremely cumbersome. So, uh, it is a real motivation for them to use the IRS as, as an entry point for, uh, paying all the taxes inside the European Union at the, uh, 13th of May. Ecofin, uh, the Council agreed to incorporate the provisions to incentivise the use of iOS in this VAT directive, which, as I mentioned, make suppliers and platforms liable for import VAT if they do not use the EOS.”
  VAT harmonisation
• “Okay, colleagues, since there are no any other business points on the agenda. I will inform you about the next meetings on Monday 25th of November 2024, we will have an econ lib meeting in camera meeting, which means, you know, without the media and without, uh, or in a restricted format. On Wednesday, 4th of December, we will have meetings in two parts at 9:00 and at 230 on Thursday, 5th of December, in the meeting in the morning between 9 and 1230. So this is it for today. Thank you very much for your active participation. Thank you.”
  Multilingualism in EU institutions
• “Dear colleagues. It's a bit more than 3:00, so we are starting our, uh, econ meeting first. Allow me to say, uh, two sentences in my mother language. Well, welcome to today's econ meeting. Uh, the Slovaks will remember that yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. In 1989. Nine. It's something we remember as a very significant milestone, as a symbol of democracy. It's one of the reasons that led us to being a member of the European Union, and something that we spoke about. And allow me to welcome you here. And we have an agenda with seven points. So first, I would like to ask you about your potential comments to the agenda, if that is not the case. Uh, we adopted the agenda for today. The second point is adoption of the minutes from our meeting at the 30th of September, 2024. Are there any comments to the minutes? No. So the minutes are adopted. 8.3. Chairs. Announcements. First announcements relates to the interpretation and interpretation. Facilities are available this afternoon in 11 languages, and the second announcement relates to the decision taken by coordinators in written procedure with a deadline by 25th of October 2020 for Econ coordinators endorsed the Summary of Decisions and recommendations of the FISC Coordinators meeting held at 17th October 2024. And now we can move to the one of the main points, the highlights on our agenda, which is a public hearing with Claudia Buch, chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB. So I would like to warmly welcome Miss Buch at this hearing at the committee, and during the past two weeks, the Parliament conducted the confirmation of hearings of the commissioners designate, and these have been quite intensive weeks in her political guidelines, Commission President von der Leyen already outlined in July, before the Parliament that the completion of the banking union is a political priority for the incoming commission. This policy priority is also reflected in the mission letter of the Commissioner designate for Financial Services and the Savings and Investment Union.”
  European Banking Union
• “The dear Vice President, Commissioner and colleagues, the Recovery and Resilience Facility is an important testing case for the European Union for at least two reasons. The first one is that there is a unique combination of reforms and investments to finance the green and digital transitions, and it might be a useful tool to prioritise our economic policies. The second reason is that joint borrowing to finance European public goods is also an innovative example worth considering also in other cases. So what has been the lessons so far? The results are a little bit mixed, but my assessment is mostly positive. But for the future, I would like to point out the following shortcomings which should be addressed before launching a similar instrument in the future. The first one is that, in my view, more focus is needed on European value added in the investment. The second one that we need ex-ante agreement on the financing, because otherwise it can crowd out a lot of different expenditures in the MFF. An outcome based evaluation. Not spending the money is important, but spending it wisely. Better administrative capacities. In order not to crowd out other European funds at the national level, and more granular definition of reforms and higher transparency. And I hope that with these lessons we can build a more resilient and better Europe. Thank you.”
  Own EU resources
• “Thank you. Uh, I'll be quick. I will have just, uh, uh, two comments. Uh, the first one is that sometimes it is more useful for me to talk about digital banknote alternative, because people understand it much better than a digital euro. What is the difference between commercial money and central bank money? On privacy, I really think that, you know, my private bank and Google knows more about me than my wife. So basically that is a bit, uh, just, uh, overrated. And the third one is that, uh, apart from that, that it is much cheaper because of the foreign duopoly and much more secure for Europe. Uh, the third important benefit from me is actually the backstop solution that, uh, you know, if everything fails in the private sector, you still have a kind of a public good alternative.”
  Digital euro
• “Mr. president, Commissioner, colleagues, I have three points. The first one is that the competitiveness compass is an important additional step after the Dragon letter reports. But still it is just a compass. It shows the way forward, but without action, we will not get us any closer to our main goal to regain the competitiveness of the union. So we need to seize the momentum and act swiftly. Secondly, simplification is clearly a necessary condition to improve competitiveness, but building a truly single market is absolutely vital. The strength of the market, with EUR 450 million people predisposes us to become a powerful global player. Abolishing remaining barriers will help us not to end as a breakfast for the strongest international players. And thirdly, a long wish list are quite common also in national debates. But then the finance minister comes and with him the reality check. So we are chasing sometimes too many goals without a clear idea how to finance those, and therefore an honest debate about the EU budget and EU mff. European public goods, savings and investment is necessary. In other words, we need a European financial deal.”
  EU Single Market harmonisation
• “I will mention three areas very briefly. First one, I think full agreement with compliance issues and also with administration of taxes. One place fully digital English first, whatever. This is very, very important in the 21st century, a second. Second aspect is what can be included in an from a more substantial point of view. I think definitely employee stock options should be there, tax base calculations should be there. Capital gains taxation in order to attract also foreigners to invest in these firms. And maybe this is politically more difficult employee taxation. So one option should be to use the employee taxation where the headquarter is, because usually in these startups, these people are moving around Europe very quickly. And you know, how do we apply telework and whatever. So from that perspective it makes sense to have have that kind of regime. But of course not tax rates, not not the countries should be able to define their own tax regime. So this is, in my view, a kind of a minimum space where we can talk about meaningfully about the potential feasibility of 28 taxation regime.”
  EU competences on taxation