Brussels, 18 March 2025
“Check against delivery”
Honourable Members, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning everyone—here in the room and online.
It’s a pleasure to welcome you to today’s EU Tax Symposium. I’d like to start by thanking everyone in the Commission, especially colleagues in TAXUD, as well as the Parliament’s FISC Sub-Committee for co-organising this great event. A huge thank you to Gerassimos Thomas—this event is your brainchild, and your hard work makes it happen every year. Likewise, a big thanks to MEP Tridico for his fantastic cooperation. I’m also delighted to welcome my old friend Mathias Cormann—thank you very much for being here with us, a true friend of Europe.
The number of people present, both in the room and online, says it all. Every year, this event keeps growing. Today, it stands as Europe’s top tax policy event—a place where people come together to shape the future of taxation. I’m delighted that tax is part of my portfolio for this mandate because it fits well with my other responsibilities. And for many reasons, it feels like familiar stomping ground. But let’s be honest—we are all in uncharted territory. Never in the EU’s history has our security been under such intense pressure. In just the past few weeks, we’ve witnessed extraordinary moments that have shattered the status quo of the western alliance. Much has been said and done to ensure Europe can urgently better protect itself, defend itself, and help our Ukrainian friends on the battlefield. I won’t dwell on this further now, but it’s an understatement to say we’re operating in a complex environment. The world has become more unstable, volatile, and transactional—that’s a fact. And with that, Europe’s need to protect, defend, and advance its economy has become much greater and more urgent.
As we speak, our economy is underperforming. Our energy prices are eroding global competitiveness, and our over-reliance on sometimes untrustworthy actors exposes our strategic vulnerability. In today’s world, this is no longer acceptable—if it ever was. We need to step up in a big way, starting here at home by building a stronger economy and a stronger Union—one that is confident, independent, able to protect its interests, and defend its citizens. This is where tax comes in. Winston Churchill famously said there was no such thing as a good tax. As much as I admire the man, I don’t agree with him on this. Taxes allow investment in the things that matter most—quality education, reliable healthcare, a sustainable environment. But we should never forget that taxes are people’s money, not government’s money—money hard-earned through hard work. That puts a high responsibility on us as policymakers. Taxes must be fair. They must be collected and spent wisely.
With all this in mind, my goal as Commissioner is to drive EU tax initiatives that finance a stronger, competitive European future—policies that, first, boost our competitiveness and the green transition; second, encourage efficient and effective taxation; and third, promote fairness and transparency nationally and internationally. Today, I’ll outline this Commission’s tax priorities based on these three themes.
Just last month, we unveiled major flagship proposals, including the Clean Industrial Deal and the Omnibus Simplification Package. There’s a huge amount in there, but if you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, Europe is sending two clear signals: first, we’re going all in on decarbonisation as a strategy to drive forward our climate, competitiveness, and resilience agendas; second, we’re bringing business on board to ensure success. We will do so by making a stronger business case for energy-intensive industries to invest in the transition, by helping clean tech companies find the growth capital they need to support innovation, and by cutting down on complexity and red tape—which simply has become too much.
When it comes to taxation, these political priorities will guide and feed into our work in the short and long term. In the short term, I’ll be asking Member States to quickly conclude negotiations on the Energy Taxation Directive. I know this is a difficult negotiation for everyone, but we need to be ambitious in ensuring our tax framework encourages electrification and reduces reliance on fossil fuels. Everyone—including the aviation and maritime sectors—needs to do their fair share. As part of the Clean Industrial Deal, several tax measures will help energy-intensive industries deal with high energy costs. We’ll be asking Member States to lower electricity taxes paid by these industries and remove extra fees unrelated to energy consumption.
We also need a massive surge in investments to propel our green transition forward—Mario Draghi’s report makes this abundantly clear. That’s why we’re introducing a new bank for industrial decarbonisation. On top of this, we’ll encourage Member States to implement tax incentives that make clean investments more financially attractive. This includes shorter depreciation periods that allow businesses to write off costs more quickly and benefit from tax incentives that offset high initial investments. It also includes using tax credits for businesses in strategic sectors of the clean transition. This will go hand in hand with an ambitious reform of State Aid to speed up and greenlight the approval process.
In the medium to long term, we’ll focus on making it easier to do business in Europe and levelling the playing field for our companies. Our work on CBAM is a great example—it balances decarbonisation goals with the need to stay competitive globally. As part of a new package, we’ve proposed dramatically simplifying CBAM—exempting around 90% of companies within the scope of CBAM reporting while still capturing over 99% of emissions. This is an important first step towards reviewing and expanding CBAM to cover more sectors and explore new measures later this year.
This brings me to my second point—efficient and effective taxation. Any conversation about competitiveness and economic growth must start with well-functioning, efficient tax systems—especially because most Member States are strapped for cash. Consider the options: raising taxes (which has many downsides), cutting costs (often not ideal), increasing debt (which pushes the bill to the next generation and is, in my view, unfair), or increasing productivity through reforms (very necessary but politically difficult). None of these are easy. The most logical way to raise money is to reduce the tax gap—yet this is too often overlooked.
It seems absurd that governments propose new taxes when they haven’t collected the taxes they’re entitled to—leaving hundreds of billions of euros of taxpayers’ money on the table. In 2022 alone, we lost 89 billion euros to the VAT gap across the 27 EU Member States—huge money by any standard. I’m glad we’ve recently signed off on new measures to modernise the EU’s VAT system, known as ‘ViDA’. This is a giant leap forward, moving us into 21st-century VAT collection. It will make life much easier for businesses, saving them time and money. But there’s more we can do to make tax administrations more efficient in collecting taxes—not just for VAT, but also excise duties, corporate, and personal income taxation. I’ll be following up on this regularly in cooperation with Member States.
On VAT, for instance, we need to facilitate exchanges with the European Public Prosecutor, who has been very successful but could do more with better access to key information. We also need better cooperation between Member States and improved information-sharing across administrations. It should not be easy to flee from debts or tax liabilities in one Member State and go sip cocktails in another.
Finally, my third point—international work on fairness and transparency. Before I go further, let me say something about the trade landscape we’re all closely following. We believe in cooperation. The EU comes in peace. We don’t seek confrontation. With each trading partner, we look for what unites us rather than what divides us. But make no mistake: if we’re hit, we’ll hit back harder.
On international tax, my priority is working with OECD and G20 partners. Of course, I regret the recent Trump administration’s announcement on our Global Tax Deal. This Deal ensures every taxpayer contributes their fair share. It discourages multinationals from shifting profit globally to exploit loopholes. It also sets minimum standards for tax competition to prevent a race to the bottom. The underlying economic logic and fairness remain just as relevant today as two or four years ago. The bottom line—this OECD deal is important. The EU will continue this work diligently with Member States and international partners. Just last week, we adopted the DAC9 Directive to put into action the OECD Pillar 2 work.
Working together internationally is the best way forward, especially on taxation issues linked to greening the economy or digital transformation. Take the new digital companies—the ‘new kids on the block’—ready to conquer the world. Our current tax rules were designed for traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. They no longer fit the digital era. It’s time to pursue OECD work and ensure tax rules work for all. I’m convinced the best solutions—on both substantive rules and transparency—will come with everyone at the table, including the Global South. I’ll be following with interest the new workstream launched by the G20.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I said I disagreed with Churchill’s assertion that there’s no such thing as a good tax. That’s true—but I also understand why he said it. Taxation should never be an end in itself. It’s a means to an end. And in the context of EU tax policy, it’s a very useful means to help deliver our political goals. But as I said, it must be collected and spent judiciously. We have a huge responsibility as policymakers to deliver the greatest possible value for every taxpayer euro. With everything happening in the world right now, that responsibility has never been greater.
I look forward to hearing the outcome of the many interesting panel discussions taking place today and wish you a very successful conference. Thank you for your attention.
Source – EU Commission