European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker brushed off questions at the G20 summit over whether he should step down amid accusations of sweetheart tax deals, saying he would lead Europe's fight against tax evasion.
However, senior British government figures, including work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, have said his role in the deals should be investigated.
After rebutting allegations last week that he presided over unfair corporate tax agreements as Luxembourg’s premier, Juncker arrived at the Group of 20 summit in Brisbane calling for more harmonised tax legislation among EU member states.
“Tax evasion sometimes happens because of the interaction between very divergent national tax rules,” Juncker said. “In accordance with the law, you can create a situation” that results in “a very low taxation of companies. This has to be avoided.”
Mr Duncan Smith said he did not know if the matters were true or false but said the European Commission needed to show it had “no fear of investigating their own”.
He did not name or criticise Mr Juncker directly when asked about the issue on BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics, but said: "This is a real moment for the European Union, for the commission, to show that it has the capacity and the determination to investigate its own."
Asked if he expected Mr Juncker to be thoroughly investigated by the commission, Mr Duncan Smith said: “I think what is required from the European Commission is complete transparency.” When pressed if this meant Mr Juncker’s case, he replied: “Yes. I would say the same by the way if it were Britain.”
Tax avoidance
Mr Juncker, who came under pressure soon after taking office this month with the disclosure that
Luxembourg
helped more than 340 companies whittle down their tax bills, sidestepped a question on whether he was the right leader to take on tax avoidance.
The commission president has said the tax arrangements were legal and a result of varying national tax regimes.
“I explained at length how in Luxembourg and in other countries, not all of them speaking French or German, things of that kind could happen” because of the discrepancies in national law, Mr Juncker said.
On November 12th, Mr Juncker ended almost a week of silence after the allegations emerged, saying he never enabled tax evasion. – (Bloomberg, PA)
