Civil society urges the EU Bank to lead on responsible taxation

On 12 January 2018, 13 NGOs and trade unions set a joint paper to the European Investment Bank (EIB) on its taxation policy. The signatories highlight that the revision of the EIB’s tax havens (NCJ) policy, foreseen in 2018, is a crucial opportunity to strengthen the tools the EIB uses to ensure its operations do not fuel tax evasion and tax avoidance practices.

The following key recommendations are developed in the paper:

1. The revised NCJ Policy review should lead to an ambitious outcome, ensuring strong policy coherence between the European Union efforts in fighting tax evasion and tax avoidance and setting in stone the EIB’s role as a leading international financial institution in the field of responsible taxation.

2. Fundamental reforms to the existing NCJ Policy are necessary in order to address the serious structural flaws of this policy. The EIB, as the EU Bank, needs to act in coherence with its development mandate under the so-called External Lending Mandate and ensure investments in developing countries are bringing the due revenues to the local tax authorities.

3. The revised NCJ Policy should reflect appropriately the numerous calls from theEuropean Commission, the European Parliament and civil society to stop investing via structures based in tax havens.

Read the paper below.