Roberto Rustichelli, the head of the
Italian antitrust authority, said Thursday that the fiscal
polices of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland made them
"authentic tax havens within the eurozone".
He told a Lower House committee that these countries conduct
"aggressive fiscal practices that damage the economies of the
other member States and, in part thanks to these practices,
register very high growth rates".
He said that, at the moment, the EU's legislative framework has
led to "a disparity in the competition conditions of the market
between member States" as it allowed "fiscal and contribution
dumping between countries".
Rustichelli said that, while Italy's GDP has grown 5% in the
last five years, Ireland's has risen 60%, Luxembourg's 17% and
the Netherlands 12% in the same period.
He said that companies moving their tax bases to other European
countries was hitting Italy hard.
"Some studies estimate that, due to unfair fiscal competition at
the European level, the Italian tax authorities lose the
possibility to tax over 23 billion dollars of profits," he said.
"11 billion of profits are moved to moved to Luxembourg, over
six billion to Ireland, 3.5 billion to the Netherlands and over
two billion to Belgium.
"This leads to damage to Italy that can be estimated to amount
to between five and eight billion dollars a year".
Rustichelli said that this means demands for fiscal frugality
from countries such as the Netherlands should be seen in a new
light.
"This situation takes on an additional problematic consequence
in the case in which countries that support these unfair fiscal
practices demand budget tightening from the countries they drain
resources from,"he said.
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