The European Commission recently published a Roadmap document titled 'Taxation - more efficient EU law-making procedure' which is seeking the views of members of the public and is open until 17th January 2019. It is aimed at seeking the views of the general public rather than the Member States.
I am aware that a European Commission Communication paper is due to be published shortly on a potential move to qualified majority voting in the area of taxation.
I firmly believe that the current unanimity based voting procedure is the most appropriate voting system in the area of taxation. Indeed, over the last 4 years, 21 Taxation initiatives have been agreed by Member States unanimously. This includes important Directives on VAT, administrative co-operation, Anti-Tax-Avoidance and also the EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions. This illustrates that the requirement for unanimity is not preventing significant agreements from being reached.
The European Treaties are clear on how tax decisions are to be taken and Ireland’s tax sovereignty is an important issue for Irish citizens. I do not support any change to existing EU voting rights on taxation.