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Hudghton (Verts/ALE),
rapporteur. – Mr President, in accordance with the Rules, I
had asked to make a comment about this report, and I am sorry I was not
called before the vote. I rise not because this is a controversial report
for this Parliament – on the contrary, the Committee on Economic and
Monetary Affairs adopted it overwhelmingly; and I am glad that Parliament
has done so too, because it is about fairness and ensuring equality of
opportunity between all 25 Member States. All this report does is to
permit the 10 new Member States to take advantage of an experimental
scheme for applying reduced rates of VAT to labour-intensive services,
which 9 of the previous 15 had been doing since 1999. The scheme was
unexpectedly carried forward and therefore was not included in the
enlargement negotiations. I am very pleased that this vote has carried
today.
However, this is a
controversial matter in the Council. Indeed, unanimity is required even
for this report to be implemented by the Council. I regret to say that my
own Member State, the UK, is one of those which has 'reservations' about
this; and some members of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs
feared that perhaps the UK or others might torpedo this report. But, more
than that, this Parliament has, since the start of the experiment,
wholeheartedly supported the principle. I hope that this vote today will
encourage the Council to ensure fairness across all 25 Member States for
the remaining time of the current experiment; and I also say, with the
full support of the chairman of the Committee on Economic and Monetary
Affairs, Mrs Berès, that we should be pressing the Council to make this a
permanent feature of our hopes of achieving the Lisbon Strategy. I hope
Parliament will support that. |
