Paul Johannes George Tang 1967 age 51 Haarlem, Netherlands (part 3)
He is a Dutch politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Netherlands. He is a member of the Labor Party, part of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
Between 2007 and 2010 Tang was a member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands.
Education: studied economics at the University of Amsterdam graduating cum laude In 2001 he earned a doctorate in economic sciences from the University of Amsterdam. He moved on to the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs where he was deputy director of General Economic Policies between September 2005 and March 2007
Office: Member of the European Parliament since 2014. In the European Parliament, he is a member of the Committee on Budgets and the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. More recently, he joined the Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect in 2015. He also serves as vice-chair on the EU-Serbia Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee
THERE IS PLENTY OF EVIDENCE THAT FOREIGN INVESTMENT IS FLOWING THROUGH SMALL COUNTRIES SUCH AS IRELAND AND LUXEMBOURG WITHOUT ANY LINK TO ACTUAL ACTIVITY
By MEP PAUL TANG
Yet the second-smallest EU state after Malta in terms of both size and population is a magnet for money. Working cheek by jowl, 137 banks from 28 countries do business here, and its investment funds manage assets worth €4.2 trillion – almost four times Spain’s GDP.
The financial sector accounts for a third of its wealth, a far greater share than the construction industry accounted for in Spain during the property boom. And giants such as Amazon – the world’s biggest company by market capitalization – have their European headquarters here. But why does all this money flow through this micro-state, a mere speck on the map between Belgium, Germany, and France?
“In reality, it’s very simple: if you are a member of the European single market,” says Nicolas Mackel, executive director of Luxembourg for Finance, the finance sector’s lobby. “It matters very little if you are big or small. Thinking in terms of the nation-state is 19th-century logic. The EU has a market of 500 million consumers. Spain exports wine and olives. We have made the financial industry our main service.”
Luxembourg’s government has used the lobby to improve a reputation that was badly scarred by the “Luxleaks” scandal when an investigation launched in 2014 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exposed tailor-made tax solutions that allowed some 350 multinationals to save billions of euros.
The revelation sent alarm bells ringing through post-crisis Europe, and outside pressure pushed Xavier Bettel’s government to put an end to decades of banking secrecy. Or so it seemed.
“The government felt obliged to act,” says Diego Velázquez, a journalist with Le Luxemburger Wort. “And it presented itself as a country that collaborates and wants to enact reforms, but make no mistake, it is talk.”
David Wagner, a member of parliament for the democratic socialist party The Left, says there has been some tinkering with the tax system, but guesses that its porous nature is what keeps the economy buoyant. “Luxembourg law allows for a huge number of exemptions, which the big consultancy firms exploit to reduce tax bills to absurd amounts,” says Wagner, whose party is the only one in Luxembourg to speak in plain terms. “The bigger the company, the lower the rate it pays. Yes, it is a tax haven for multinationals.”
Brussels is not satisfied with Luxembourg’s reforms, either. Last year, the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, pointed to an in-depth study showing that Belgium, Cyprus, Hungary, Ireland, Malta, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg have aggressive tax practices with the potential to undermine the balance of the internal market and add to the average taxpayer’s burden.
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