European Union

The EU Commission's ultimatum to Poland expired on Monday. Although Warsaw has not responded to the EU's concerns about its reform of the Constitutional Tribunal, Brussels has refrained from issuing an official reprimand. Instead a prolongation of discussions has been agreed on. Should Brussels take a tougher stance vis-à-vis Warsaw?

Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen has won Austria's presidential election, beating Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party by a narrow margin of roughly 31,000 votes. The country has shown that its political landscape is more colourful than many believe, some commentators write with relief. Others view Hofer's strong showing as an alarm signal for all Europe.

Demonstrators have been blocking refineries and petrol depots in France for days in protest at the controversial labour market reform. The Socialist government hopes to liberalise French labour laws with the legislation. Who can bring real change to the country at this stage?

In the refugee crisis the collaboration between the EU and Turkey has increasingly come under the public spotlight. Journalists and academics discuss how much the two sides need each other and who stands to gain or lose from closer cooperation.

Nato inaugurated a new missile defence site at a military base in the locality of Deveselu in Romania in mid May. Another such site is to be set up in northern Poland. The Alliance also plans to boost its troops in Poland and the Baltic states. Commentators in Latvia view the plans and a book by a former Nato general with great concern.

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of our daily Brussels Briefing. To receive it every morning in your email in-box, sign up here.

After months of agonising, the European Commission’s investigation into internet platforms is set to arrive with a bit of a whimper.

Fears of an all-encompassing inquisition into internet platforms – with commission officials bursting into the offices of Facebook and Google like a Monty Python sketch – have not come to pass.

"Nobody expects the European Commission."

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The Council: 

1.      CONFIRMS the importance of continuing and intensifying action to tackle tax fraud, tax evasion and aggressive tax planning at national, EU and global level, as requested by the European Council in May 2013 and recalled by Ministers at the informal ECOFIN on 22 April 2016; 

2.      RECALLS the importance of taking effective steps to fight tax evasion, tax fraud and tax avoidance as well as money laundering, in particular in times of budgetary constraints; 

3.      therefore WELCOMES the Commission Communication on an External Strategy for Effective Taxation and NOTES the Commission Recommendation on the implementation of measures against tax treaty abuse; 

4.      RECALLS that from the discussions during an informal meeting of ECOFIN ministers in Amsterdam support emerged for the establishment of an EU-list of non-cooperative jurisdictions and coordinated defensive measures, both to be defined by the Council;

Regarding the Communication on an External Strategy, the Council: 

5.      CALLS FOR a swift and comprehensive implementation of the internationally agreed standards on transparency and exchange of information developed by the OECD and ENCOURAGES all jurisdictions to commit to implement international standards as soon as possible and URGES jurisdictions that are not yet participants in the OECD's inclusive framework to join without delay; 

6.      AGREES on the establishment by the Council of an EU list of third country non-cooperative jurisdictions and to explore coordinated defensive measures at EU level without prejudice to Member State competence; 

7.      STRESSES the need to work closely and in parallel with the OECD to draw the international criteria in this area and to take into account the work of the Global Forum when developing the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions; 

8.      DECIDES that the criteria on transparency for establishing a list of non-cooperative jurisdictions have to be compliant with internationally agreed standards on transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes, in particular standards developed by the OECD, both on exchange of information on request and automatic exchange of information (Common Reporting Standard); 

9.      INVITES the Code of Conduct Group to consider  an additional criterion for listing non-cooperative jurisdictions based on the non-existence of harmful tax regimes as defined by the criteria of the Code of Conduct on Business Taxation, and possible additional criteria, which could be inspired in particular by the OECD BEPS actions; 

10.    INVITES the Code of Conduct Group to start work on an EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions by September 2016, and to determine, on the basis of a first screening by the Commission, third Countries with which dialogues should start, with a view to establishing an EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions and exploring defensive measures at EU level to be endorsed by the Council in 2017. Those defensive measures could be considered to be implemented in the tax as well as in the non-tax area;

11.    WELCOMES the pilot project for the automatic exchange of information on ultimate beneficial owners endorsed by all Member States with the aim of  developing a common standard;

12.    INVITES the Commission to consider legislative initiatives on Mandatory Disclosure Rules inspired by Action 12 of the OECD BEPS project with a view to introducing more effective disincentives for intermediaries who assist in tax evasion or avoidance schemes; 

13.    SUPPORTS the need to update the principles of tax good governance to be used as the new standard provision in future negotiations with third countries and INVITES the Code of Conduct Group to examine key elements which should be contained in a clause to be inserted in agreements between the EU and those countries; 

14.    CONCURS with the importance of tax good governance for developing countries to increase their domestic revenue mobilisation and UNDERLINES the importance of assisting them in meeting tax good governance; 

15.    STRESSES the importance of the Addis Tax Initiative (ATI), with its core commitment to doubling or substantially increasing support for technical cooperation on taxation and domestic resource mobilisation, already signed up to by twelve Member States, and CALLS FOR all remaining Member States to join the ATI; 

16.    IS READY to examine the proposal to include EU's updated tax good governance standards into the EU Financial Regulation in relation to third countries once a new proposal has been put forward by the Commission; 

Regarding the Recommendation on the implementation of measures against tax treaty abuse, the Council: 

17.    NOTES the recommendation from the Commission to ensure that the implementation of OECD BEPS recommendations on Actions 6 and 7 is compliant with EU law; 

18.    REITERATES the importance of taking concrete and coherent action against double non-taxation through tax evasion or avoidance via the operation of double tax conventions, in line with the competence of Member States in negotiating double tax conventions bilaterally and the principle of subsidiarity; 

19.    WELCOMES the proposed provisions with regard to a principal purpose test and permanent establishments to be included in bilateral tax treaties agreed by a Member State, while ACKNOWLEDGING that bilateral tax treaties remain the competence of the Member States and that other measures elaborated in the context of OECD BEPS Action 6 may be helpful, such as limitation on benefits (lob) clauses.  

Simba Toys v EUIPO
Intellectual and industrial property
Advocate General Szpunar considers that the EU trade mark representing the shape of a Rubik’s Cube must be declared invalid

Simba Toys v EUIPO
Intellectual and industrial property
Advocate General Szpunar considers that the EU trade mark representing the shape of a Rubik’s Cube must be declared invalid

Simba Toys v EUIPO
Intellectual and industrial property
Advocate General Szpunar considers that the EU trade mark representing the shape of a Rubik’s Cube must be declared invalid

Place:          Justus Lipsius building, Brussels
Chair(s):    Henk Kamp, Minister for Economic Affairs of the Netherlands
                    Sander Dekker, State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands

All times are approximate and subject to change

Thursday 26 May - Internal Market - Industry - Space Policy

+/- 08.20
Doorstep by Henk Kamp

+/- 12.00
Working lunch debate on the digital single market strategy

+/- 14.00
Beginning of the Competitiveness Council meeting

Adoption of the agenda
Adoption of A Items (public session)

+/- 14.10
Digital single market strategy: mainstreaming competitiveness

Any other business (AOB):
Quantum technology - High performance computing

+/- 14.30
Draft regulation on cross border portability of online content (public session)

+/- 14.50
AOB: agenda for single market implementation

+/- 15.00
Competitiveness check-up

+/- 15.55
Better regulation to strengthen competitiveness

+/- 17.20
AOB: work programme of incoming presidency - Friends of Industry

+/- 17.30
AOB: Product safety and market surveillance package (public session)

+/- 17.45
Review of the posting of workers directive (public session)
(Break)

+/- 19.00
Uptake of space data

+/- 20.15
AOB: work programme of incoming presidency

+/- 20.30
Joint press conference of the Telecommunications and Competitiveness Councils (life streaming)

Friday 27 May - Research & Innovation

(ttbc)
Doorstep by Sander Dekker

+/- 09.30
Beginning of the Competitiveness Council meeting

+/- 09.40
FP7: final evaluation report and future outlook (public session)

+/- 10.00
Research and innovation friendly regulation (public session)

+/- 10.20
Transition towards an Open Science system (public session)

+/- 12.15
Any other business:
2016 ESFRI roadmap (public session)
European Innovation Council (public session)
Work programme of incoming presidency

+/- 13.00
Press conference (life streaming)

+/- 14.00
Working lunch debate on the European Research Area