Briefing paper to the political institutions of the EU

23 Apr Briefing paper to the political institutions of the EU

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Summary

Measures that have been implemented by EU institutions together with those implemented by the Member States to counter tax crimes are having a positive effect but there is still room for improvement to tackle tax crimes in their interconnections with organised crime, corruption and money laundering, and make the enforcement tools more effective.

This briefing paper features a series of recommendations for the European Union Commission, its Agencies, and other political institutions of the EU to complement and improve upon the existing measures. This paper highlights complex issues to be addressed and offers recommendations aimed at better detecting, preventing, investigating and mitigating tax crimes and their interconnection with corruption and other financial crimes.  Detailed and subject-specific sets of recommendations for the EU and its Member States have already been provided in PROTAX reports and toolkits for policymakers, law enforcement agencies and tax administrations and can be further consulted.

Download the report here

Key Findings

  • To prevent tax fraud in the EU, there has to be continuously enhanced joint preliminary efforts by the EU Member States to harmonise tax policies and ensure prosperity through fair, efficient and sustainable taxation.
  • The development of more advanced methodologies of analysis (based on comparable data and statistics) to estimate losses due specifically to VAT fraud is required in order to analyse the full impact of fraud on VAT Gap and build adequate policies from a criminal law perspective.
  • The EU should increase public awareness about specific external channels for whistleblowers within the various EU agencies or develop additional channels for other frauds which have an impact on the EU budget and/or other financial interests.
  • An EU-wide entity or a platform, based on Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, should be established to put into practice an articulated whole-of-EU-Member States strategy aimed at providing bespoke information-sharing infrastructure for fighting tax crimes and different types of financial crime.
  • A comprehensive assessment of judicial cooperation in criminal tax matters across the EU should be developed to identify and address current shortcomings in implementing the EU legal frameworks within the EU Member States.

Please note that the law cited were valid and correct at the time of the reports publication.