Committee on Development Ordinary meeting HEARING Joint meeting Subcommittee on Tax Matters
1 October 2026
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DEVE European Parliament
Follow its sittings03:30 - 06:22
Speaker 1
Okay, let's go.
This is item five. We are jointly with the subcommittee on tax matters. And I welcome my co-chair Pasquale Tridico, who's the chair of the FISC committee. We will also be moderated by our DEVE colleague Udo Bullmann. So, this is the joint meeting on taxation and the achievement of the SDGs and the link between these two.
This issue was widely articulated at the Sevilla conference on financing for development, where the focus was on enhancing national resource mobilization in order to tackle poverty and inequality, in particular in low and middle income countries. As we all know, ODA is shrinking and at the same time debt costs are rising and rising even faster in least developed countries. So it's even more important that we focus on the fairness of taxation systems and fiscal space in order to make sure that we continue on a trajectory towards achieving Agenda 2030.
The EU already plays an important role in supporting partner countries' efforts to strengthen tax systems and combating illicit financial flows, money laundering, and tax evasion. These are important areas of cooperation under our development cooperation portfolio, and so it's a timely moment for us to discuss the effectiveness of our EU actions right now, especially as we prepare the Global Europe instrument. So we are also supporting efforts to enhance international rules on corporate taxation beyond the development agenda, and hence we have the Subcommittee on Tax Matters who will give us the benefit of their expertise. Before handing over to my colleague, let me welcome our three experts who bring very diverse backgrounds to the debate. We have Maria José Garde, who is Head of Secretariat of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes at the OECD.
We have Mary Baine, who is the Executive Secretary of the African Tax Administration Forum and connected online this morning from South Africa. And we have the pleasure of the company of Conor O'Neill, Head of Advocacy and Policy at Christian Aid in Ireland.
So we want to welcome all of those guests. My colleague Udo Bullmann, who initiated this hearing in the DEVE committee, will moderate the debate. But for the moment, let me hand over to Pasquale, the chair of the subcommittee on tax matters, for his opening remarks.
06:22 - 08:41
Speaker 2
Thank you, Barry. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your introduction. And I would also to welcome you today for this joint hearing on promoting fair taxation, combating illicit financial flow, and fighting inequality in developing countries. Every year, governments around the world lose revenue worth billions of euros due to tax evasion and tax avoidance by wealthy individuals or big international companies. By reinforcing the global tax architecture, the EU simultaneously support developing countries in securing their much-needed revenue.
The work of OECD and the Global Forum, and today we have Maria Jose Garde, thank you for being here, deserves a special mention for developing standards on transparency and the exchange of information, supporting countries worldwide in implementing these standards. The European Parliament has been strongly supportive of the OECD work on the so-called BEPS, Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, and more recently the Pillar Two reform which introduced a global minimum effective tax rate on corporate profits, despite all the recent changes which occurred due to the request of the new US administration, so-called side-by-side. We are also following with interest the more recent development at the level of the United Nations, where developing countries have launched the initiative to work on a framework convention on international tax cooperation. In this context, we as FISC are going for a mission to Nairobi to attend the next round of negotiation of this next framework. Against this background, I look forward to hearing the presentation of our expert and the following discussion on how we can further improve the international tax framework to promote fair taxation and combat illicit financial flow with a view to the specific concern of developing countries.
Let me now hand over to Mr. Bullmann, Udo, the floor is yours.
08:41 - 09:24
Speaker 3
Thank you very much, dear chairs. Warm welcome to our special guests today and let me also thank our excellent secretariats who have prepared a wonderful hearing. And I'm totally sure that the results of our conversations this morning will feed into our further work in this committee and beyond. What is at stake, dear friends, dear colleagues? We have to witness in the world economy, whether it's growing or not growing or hugely growing or not too much growing, inequality is rising.
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