So have the choice of the language you would like to listen to the debates in. We also have a hashtag for those of you who would like to comment and promote the event online, and it is hashtag, tax mix, 2050, hashtag, tax mix. 2050 you will see on the little screen in front of you, there's a code displayed also for Wi Fi, which means that you don't have to be on G all day. As you know, we will have several panel discussions throughout the day, and you will have the opportunity of asking questions at the end of those panels. To do so you will find on your desks cards speaking cards on which you can put your name, you can put your seat number, you can just fill in the card and hand them over to the ushers who are around the room. They will make sure that your question is taken when the time comes. And of course, providing we do have time for a Q and A we will focus today on the future of taxation, as I mentioned, and this future will have to raise to the challenges currently met by our societies and by our economies, not to mention the more than challenging geopolitical climate at the moment, and we'll be looking at all the angles that impact this taxation policy, from climate change to digitalization, from aging to globalization. So as you see, and as you know, our debates will be very broad. These trends will have a significant impact on taxation. And since its launch in 2022 the tax symposium is the opportunity to reflect upon what should be the best policy mix, the best tax mix for the EU in the coming decades. So that's what we'll be discussing today. And without any further ado, let me open today's proceedings and discussion by inviting one of our hosts to the floor. Please welcome Mr. Esteban Gonzalez bonds, who is member of the European Parliament and vice president in charge of the national parliament.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear members of the national parliaments, dear ministers, dear colleagues, dear participants, welcome to the European Parliament in Brussels and to the third EU tax symposium, the first under this new legislative term. I would like to start by thanking you for giving me the opportunity to address you all in the chamber, one of the most important places in this parliament where we make politics and approve laws, I would like to extend my gratitude to all participants, both on site, on online panelists and moderators who have joined us today, your presence reflects the importance of shaping a tax system that fosters competitiveness, fairness and prosperity. Taxation is at the core of all our economies. It is a fundamental pillar for our social contract. Thought tracks taxation we finance essential public goods, health care, education, infrastructure, and especially in these recent days, our security, our structure, tax system also allows allow us to address societal challenges, promote investment and support economic growth while ensuring social cohesion. Striking this balance is not easy, but it is a challenge that we must address together. This is the reason why we are here today. We all know that tax decisions rest largely in the hands of member states, directly affecting our citizens and businesses. However, in our interconnected world, national policies cannot exist in isolation. Nowadays, more and more areas require a constant dialog and coordinated efforts between member states and the EU level taxation is not. Not an exception. Together with national parliaments, the European Parliament wants to continue to be an important player, representing the voice of EU citizens in the design of EU taxation policy. That is why I would like to highlight the presence of 46 representatives of national parliaments coming from 20 Member States. Thank you for being here today. Having you here alone allows us to reduce the distance between Brussels and the Europe's capitals, ensuring the creation of a taxation system that is fair, effective and responsive to the needs of our societies today, we have an important opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions. This tax symposium is not just about the panels, it's about all of us. I invite you to participate and to exchange ideas with policy makers, experts and stakeholders. This is very important, as the high complexity of tax matters requires different perspectives, all your perspectives. I'm confident that today's discussion will bring valuable insights to address one of the most pressing challenges facing all our union ensuring Europe's future competitiveness in an increasingly complex global environment. I wish you all a productive day, and hope to see you soon again. Thank you very much and welcome
thank you very much. And I would like now to welcome our second host for today, and please welcome Mr. Pascuali tridico, who is member of the European Parliament, and He's also chair of the subcommittee on tax matters. You Good
morning, everybody, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being here today. It is a very important day which was actually possible thanks to the work of all the staff from the Secretariat of the parliament, of the fiscal committee. And from the work of the tax food DG at the commission. For this reason, I want to thank you. First of all, the general director, Thomas gracimus, and the doctor Benoit West with with with you, and all the stuff with them. They worked very much to realize this day, today, dear colleagues, dear gentlemen and ladies. We today are here not only to have an exercise, an academic exercise. We are today here to set an agenda, and we have four great sessions today. One focuses on wealth taxes. A second one focuses on sustainability and competitiveness. A third one focuses on tax reforms, both at European at international level, and the fourth one focuses on artificial intelligence and the new challenge posed by hit now, starting from the first wealth taxes. We know today how polarized the world is, inequality has been rising so much within the new model, which we call it financial capitalism. Dozen of people, around 12 in the world, own the wealth of alpha of the people in the world, three comma, 5 billion of the people in the world own as much as 12 people of the world within this polarization, growth, economic growth is as well under threat. Many economists speak about secular stagnation and refer to it as a consequence of inequality as well. In fact, consumption and aggregate demand depend as well on the distribution of income. Taxation is at a stake, not only as a matter of distribution, but as well as a matter of supporting our welfare states. And in the current economic situation, the new challenge concerning the distribution of income become really the major issue. Few days ago, a proposal by French economist Robert which was similar to the one proposal last summer at the g20 in Brazil, made clear that it is possible to. Day to collect up to 120 billion euros for a mere tax of 3% in Europe, 3% on ultra high net wealth. Will the law for a collection of 120 billion euro, and those people would not even realize that they are paying 3% of their wealth. And actually it is not a 3% on the people that they already pay that amount of tax, but it's a tax that people would not pay, as far as probably their secretary they would pay. So it is a matter of fairness, but it's a matter as well of economic issue as well. We know how important is distribution for growth. As I said, second, Kahneman, few years ago, got a Nobel Prize opening a very important stream in economics, which is behavioral economics. We know how taxation is important for, as I say, the distribution and to support our welfare state. And we are proud in Europe of our welfare state. And we know that in Europe, we spend much more of other countries together for our welfare state, but we are proud of it, because thanks to our welfare state, all of us reach at higher life expectancy, higher education level, higher standard of living. Now, Kahneman said that you can do something more with taxation as well, which is guiding behavior, and we know that they are good things and bad things in the market. And as Commissioner oxtras knows, we know that tobacco, for instance, is detrimental for a life of people, and we know how to make it possible to deviate from from bad consumption. So it is not only about tobacco, of course, it is just an example, but we know how taxation is important for guiding behavior as well. Third, we know that our firms, our workers, pay in the traditional sector, particularly manufacturing, services, pay quite a lot of taxes, and we all want that workers in film pay less taxes. You know, average workers in Europe earn around 40,000 euros. Out of it, they pay contribution for pension, they pay income taxes, they pay social contribution. In the end, out of 40,000 euros, they end up with a net wage of 20,000 euros, which is a low wage. At the same time, we see big giant corporation having little amount of worker, and in proportion have a huge bill with huge profit, and in proportion pay much less taxes than firms and workers in traditional sectors. I'm referring in particular, to the big corporation which work with artificial intelligence, which work with new technology and substitute machine with workers. That is a great advantage for the economy. It is not something bad, it is something that we need to boost. We need to boost innovation. However, we know that, for instance, our pension system is based on workers, workers of today finance pension of today, and we need contribution from worker in order to pay our pension system and our welfare system. That's why it is important to recalibrate our the weight of our fiscal system on capital, on labor, lowering down the weight of taxes on labor, on capital, and thinking about new form of sources which generate income today, we know that new source of input which generate income are data, and data are input on Which this giant of the web in particular, do not pay taxes. We in Europe were very good in the last years, fostering a debate and boost making possible debate on together with OECD on web taxes and on pillar one and pillar two as well. We need to keep this track. The competition with our international player, with our allied as well in the world, is possible if we show our strength. Yesterday, we were in the Museum of Natural Science. I got the permission to say that actually dinosaur a. Stint themselves in the in the age, during the life stint, because they did not change. In fact, Darwin taught us that in order to survive, we need to change, we need to adapt. We need to change our institution and our policy. This is the moment to change pillar one and pillar two were the beginning of a new change for global and equal and fair taxation. We need to keep this track and not to lower down our defense. This is actually our defense as well. We know as well, and this is one panel which which we dedicate that competitiveness is important. We know that simplification is important. We know that firms complain correct correctly about too much bureaucracy, and we need to set an agenda on that simplification is probably one of the most important incentive for firms to pay what they need to pay.
And we do have example in in our country of good management, of how to make bureaucracy lowering down. We do have a country in Europe which from which we can learn with our subcommittee, Fisk subcommittee, we are going through European member state to look out in Finland, for instance, in Estonia, in other country, they are making simple bureaucracy for firms to pay what they need to Pay in a correct and fair way. We need to advance as well. On this respect, the symposium of today is focusing on these four big issue I was mentioning today, I am sure that we will be bold enough to make the right step towards a more fair and equal global taxation and European taxation reform. Thank you very much for your attention and enjoy the symposium today.
Thank you, Mr. Tridico, and thank you both for setting the scene. I'm highlighting some of the challenges that we'll be facing today. We'll now hear about the tax priorities for the new commission, and to do so, I would like to welcome Commissioner wapka hooksta, who is in charge of climate, Net Zero, clean growth and taxation.
Hon members, ladies and gentlemen, and good morning to everyone here and also online. It is a great pleasure. It truly is a great pleasure to be here with all of you, to welcome all of you at today's EU tax symposium. Let me start by thanking everyone in the commission, and especially the colleagues in tax code as well as Parliament's FISC subcommittee for CO organizing this truly great event. First and foremost, a huge thank you to grasimus, Thomas, this event, Dias mus is your brain chart. It is your hard work that makes it happen every single year. And I think that is a great achievement. Likewise, a big thanks to MEP treaty call, not only for bringing Darwin into the debate, but also for organizing this and for the truly fantastic cooperation. So please friends, give them a big hand.
Delighted to have all of you but one person I wanted to single out in particular, and he knows I'm is I'm going to do it again. Matthias Corman, thank you very much for being here with us, having the OECD and a true friend of Europe, even though you are now down Ond there. You think about that and what that means. But Matthias knows dear friends, the number of people in this room, but also online, is roughly 2000 it was already said before. And every year, every year these events gets, or keeps getting better, bigger, I should say. And today it's Europe's top tax policy event, where people come together to share, to shape, basically the future of taxation. And I'm truly delighted that tax is part of my portfolio for this mandate, as part of my greater set of responsibilities, for many reasons, but first and foremost, because it is so tremendously important, it matters. Us for what we can do. And in a way, it is familiar ground, given what I've done before. But in many ways, let's be honest, it's also unchartered territory for all of us, because never in the EU's history has our security been as much under pressure. And if you look at the last few weeks alone, we've witnessed extraordinary moments that have shattered at least, at least the Westerns Alliance status quo. And a lot has been said and done to ensure that Europe can urgently better protect itself, defend itself and help our Ukrainian friends out on the battlefield. And I'm not going to dwell on that now, but it is an understatement to say that we're operating in a truly, very complex environment. The world has become more unstable. The world has become way more volatile, and it has become way more transactional. That's simply a fact of life. And with that in mind to me, that means that Europe needs to protect, to defend and to advance its economy, and it has become ever more urgent. As we speak frankly, our economy is underperforming, our energy prices are eroding our global competitiveness, and our over reliance on sometimes untrustworthy actors exposes our strategic vulnerability, and in today's world, that simply is no longer acceptable if it ever was. So we need to step up. We need to step up in a big way, beginning here at home, by building a stronger economy and frankly speaking, a stronger union, a union that is confident, a union that is independent, a union that is able to protect its interests and defend the interests of its citizens, full stop and dear friends, that is also where taxes come in. Winston Churchill famously said that there is no such thing as a good tax. And as much as I admire the man, I don't agree with him on this, taxes actually allow for many of the things that matter most, for quality of education, for reliable health care, for sustainable environments. And I could go on and on and on and on, but of course, on the other hand, we should never forget that taxes are people's money, not government's money. It was money that was earned by hard work, and that puts a high responsibility on us as policy makers. Taxes need to be fair and they need to be collected and spent wisely. And with that in mind, my goal as commissioner is to drive EU tax incentive initiatives that finance a stronger and more competitive European future policies that one, boost our competitiveness and the green transition. Two, encourage efficient and effective tax collection, and three promote fairness and transparency nationally and clearly also internationally. Let me outline the tax priorities of the commission based on these three themes. Ladies and gentlemen, just last month, we unveiled some big flagship proposals, including the clean industrial deal and the omnibus simplification package, and there's a huge amount in there. But if you zoom out and look at the bigger, bigger picture, in my view, Europe sends two very clear signals. First, we're going all in. We're truly going all in on decarbonization as a strategy to drive forward competitiveness, climate and resilience agendas and that combination. And second, we are bringing businesses on board. We are bringing businesses on board again to ensure success, and we will do so by making a stronger business case for energy intensive industries to invest in the transition, and by helping out clean tech companies find the growth capital they need to support innovation, and by cutting down on the complexity of red tape that simply has become too much. And then when it comes to taxation, these political priorities will guide and will feed into our work in the short and in the long term. In the short term, I will be asking our member states to quickly conclude negotiations on the energy taxation directive and. And I'm aware, I'm aware that is not an easy negotiation for everyone, but we do need to be ambitious. We do need to be ambitious in ensuring our tax framework that encourages electrification and reduces reliance on fossil fuels and everyone, including aviation and the maritime sectors, need to do their fair share as part of the clean industrial deal. There will also be several tax measures to help energy intensive industries deal with their higher energy costs, and we will be asking member states to lower electricity taxes paid by these industries and get rid of extra fees that don't have anything to do with energy and energy consumption. Now, we also need a massive surge in investments to basically propel our green transition going forward. Mario Draghi, report of last year actually makes it abundantly clear, and that is why we're introducing a new bank for.
