On the appointment of Green MEPs on the European Parliament Panama investigation committee, Alternattiva Demokratika Chairperson, Prof

Arnold Cassola, said: “We will be coordinating closely with our Green colleagues in the EP. It is good to emphasise that our priorities will be not only to establish political responsibilities, but also to establish what roles so called ‘intermediaries’ have had in helping to doge taxes.”

The 65 member Parliamentary committee will include 4 Greens/EFA MEPs, who were confirmed by the group yesterday evening: Pascal Durand, Sven Giegold, Eva Joly and Molly Scott Cato.

The Greens/EFA group will also have 4 substitute members: Heidi Hautala, Ernest Maragall, Michel Reimon and Ernest Urtasun. 

The other political groups will decide on their representatives over the coming week and the European Parliament plenary will vote to confirm the constitution of the committee at its plenary session on 23 June. The committee will then hold its initial constitutive meeting, hopefully in July. For the Greens, there are 4 headline priorities that should guide the committee’s work:

– Establishing whether banks and other financial institutions failed to meet their obligations to fight tax evasion and money laundering.

– Establishing the exact role of intermediaries in helping individuals and companies to dodge taxes or launder dirty money.

– Clarifying the political responsibility, both as regards those European politicians named in the papers and the role of national authorities and the Commission in allowing this to occur.

– Completing the work of the original investigation set up by parliament into the Luxembourg Leaks revelations, which will be facilitated by the inquiry committee’s structure.