MIDDAY BRIEF, IN BRIEF

Today at Commission, no tax havens here, we’re European

Bank profits, Russia and Greece were the topics of the day.

Theresa May’s government isn’t the only political institution that wants to have cake and eat it. The European Commission often puts itself in the same boat.

Today’s case in point is tax evasion.

When asked about an Oxfam report indicating aggressive tax minimization and profit shifting by top European banks, including more bank profits being booked in Luxembourg than U.K., Germany and Sweden combined, Commission finance spokesperson Vanessa Mock took credit for the data, which she said was made available thanks to EU transparency.

Mock and another Commission spokesperson Alexander Winterstein then refused to engage with any of the logical implications of the report: that there is a tax haven problem in Europe.

“We do not have tax havens in the European Union” Alexander Winterstein said. No, Europe just calls them something else.

“We’ve achieved more in the Juncker Commission the last two years than in the last two decades,” Mock insisted, while referring to “very rigorous” new standards that governments have signed up regarding taxation transparency.

Asked about whether the Commission had changed its policy approach to Russia’s proposed Nord Stream pipeline, Winterstein said “We don’t like the Nord Stream project politically.” The commission’s competition spokesperson however declined to debate the economic and competition merits of the project.

Economic spokesperson Annika Breidthardt claimed “significant progress” on Greek bailout talks, but was not able to specify the nature of the progress.

Breidthardt said that the progress wasn’t yet significant enough to for creditors to return to Athens for the next stage of talks.

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