The ECR Group supports cutting red tape, simplifying cross-border business activity and giving SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups better tools to grow across the Single Market.

However, this must not become a pretext for weakening Member States’ tax sovereignty or moving towards further EU tax harmonisation.

Speaking ahead of the vote on Parliament’s own-initiative report on the feasibility of a 28th tax regime to support EU competitiveness, ECR Shadow Rapporteur Roberts Zīle warned that the report has moved away from practical simplification and towards federalist tax integration.

ECR Shadow Rapporteur Roberts Zīle said.

“The original idea behind the EU Inc. proposal was practical and necessary. Europe’s businesses need less bureaucracy, simpler cross-border procedures and efficient digital tools to scale across the Single Market. The ECR Group supports that objective. But this report has taken a useful idea and turned it into a vehicle for tax centralisation.

“Instead of focusing on procedural simplification, the text points towards a single consolidated corporate tax base and revives ideas such as the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base and BEFIT, which would undermine Member States’ right to shape their own tax systems. Even worse, it opens the door to qualified majority voting in tax matters, weakening the unanimity principle that protects national sovereignty, especially for smaller Member States.

“The ECR Group also opposes the market-distorting nature of the proposed tax regime, which would limit the tax module to a subset of companies based on criteria such as size and research and development expenditure. Instead of offering horizontal relief to traditional SMEs across Europe, the report risks creating an exclusive club for selected companies.

“Europe needs competitiveness, not tax uniformity. We should make it easier for businesses to operate across borders, but we must do so while fully respecting Member States’ competences and the unanimity rule in tax matters.”