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The debate around fair taxation and the fight against inequality is definitely gaining momentum in Brussels.

The European Policy Centre (EPC) organised a round table discussion on “Modernising tax policies in the EU Single Market to achieve economic and social objectives” on 7 November that I had the opportunity to attend.

Member States are also starting to look seriously at the issue of inequality, as the Permanent Representation of Austria organised an event on distribution inequality as a possible threat for the European economy and society on 15 November.

At the same time the EU institutions are increasingly active on taxation, with the Commission putting forward various proposals to tackle tax evasion and elusion, to move towards a common consolidated base tax in Europe to address increasingly unfair tax completion policy. The European Parliament is active with its PANA committee – the Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion set up after the Panama Papers – and its work on country–by-country reporting and in favour of corporate tax transparency. On 16 November, the S&D group organised an interesting event on this, to take stock of current initiatives and discuss the way forward to ensure that companies pay their fair share of taxes where they make profit and the system facilitates the necessary exchange of information and transparency on such a fundamental issue.

Stakeholders are also very active. The EU Office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) organised an interesting evening debate on aggressive tax competition practices and secrecy in the presence of economic Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. The main focus was on how to tackle the dark side of globalisation and to enhance global cooperation to tackle deep-seated problems in international corporate taxation.

All these events were good opportunities to improve knowledge and understanding on such fundamental yet complex issues and to prepare Social Platform’s work for the years to come. Taxation is already one of the key elements of our ongoing campaign on EU social standards and together with our members we have decided to make tax justice a strategic priority of our network and expand our work in this area in the coming period.

Taxation indeed has a double “social” function. It has a clear redistributive effect and can soften income and wealth inequalities. It is also a way to collect revenues to ensure adequate and sustainable financing of our welfare states, which have important wealth effects, as universal access to quality services, such as housing, health, education and care and adequate social protection systems and pensions have important redistributive effects too.

These are the two angles through which Social Platform will look at the issues of taxation and inequalities in the coming years. It is fundamental that the social movement doesn’t miss the window of opportunity created by this momentum and comes up with concrete demands and recommendations to close existing loopholes in taxation systems to fight tax avoidance and evasion. We must set up a more just and progressive tax systems, looking at existing and new forms of taxation, including environmental and financial tax as well as wealth, properties and inheritance taxes.