Von der Leyen will give her State of the Union speech on Wednesday.
(Photo: imago images/ZUMA Wire)
Brussels Exactly a year ago, Ursula von der Leyen announced: “We must remove the obstacles that continue to make life difficult for our small and medium-sized companies,” said the Commission President in her State of the European Union speech last September and promised SME relief package.
The Commission took a year to fulfill this promise. Exactly one day before von der Leyen returns to Parliament to give her annual State of the Union speech, the Commission presented the package this Tuesday.
Specifically, there are two draft laws. On the one hand, the late payment directive is to be revised and a uniform framework for the taxation of companies is to be created. On the other hand, in the future a representative for small and medium-sized businesses will report directly to the President of the Commission and the Internal Market Commissioner.
“This is exactly what we have been demanding for years,” says Markus Pieper, Member of the European Parliament for the CDU. Pieper also believes that revising the late payment guidelines makes sense. “However, that is not what we mean by reducing bureaucracy,” said the MP. “A cloudy commitment to reducing bureaucracy is not enough,” says Joachim Schuster (SPD).
The revised late payment directive is intended to help companies collect money from other EU countries. Binding payment deadlines of 30 days must be adhered to for all commercial transactions. A quarter of insolvencies among small and medium-sized companies within the EU are currently due to non-receipt of payments.
Chairwoman of the Internal Market Committee welcomes the reform
Anna Cavazzini, chairwoman of the Internal Market Committee, welcomes the draft: “A reform of the law to combat late payments is long overdue in order to make life easier for small and medium-sized companies in the EU internal market,” says the Green politician.
At the same time, the EU Commission also presented a draft law that is intended to create a uniform framework for the taxation of companies. In the future, companies will only have to fill out one tax form at the location where their headquarters are located – this form will then be forwarded to the authorities in the countries with additional branches.
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“Stronger harmonization of corporate taxation in the EU is the key to combating tax tricks by large companies in the long term,” says Rasmus Andresen from the Greens. However, it is disappointing that the EU Commission is not exhausting the possibilities in tax matters in order to enforce a fair distribution of profits between the member states.
“You have to be realistic,” says Markus Ferber (CSU). “The Commission has already proposed the standardization of the corporate tax base more than once and has gotten a bloody nose from the Member States each time.”
The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry also considers both the revision of the late payment directive and the uniform framework for corporate taxation to be fundamentally valid projects. “The resulting concrete relief, especially for medium-sized businesses in Germany, is likely to be limited,” says DIHK President Peter Adrian. Holger Schwannecke, Secretary General of the Central Association of German Crafts, sees it the same way: “The revision of the late payment directive may lead to improvements for small and medium-sized companies and businesses in some member states, but it is far from sufficient and ignores the actual problem.”
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