The MEPs also referred among others to the proposal that the European Union should show unity at the G20 Meeting. “The finance sector should make a fair and tangible contribution to share the burden, which it has saddled the real economy with”, says the text of the resolution.

The Commission shall among others

• research, which previous experiences have been made with taxes imposed on financial transactions,
• assess the advantages and disadvantages of introducing taxes on financial transactions,
• as certain the tax revenue potential compared with other sources of taxation.

The Commission should complete the assessment of the impact of a global tax on financial transactions well ahead of the next G20 Summit.

Apart from that, the resolution of the European Parliament does also state that the banking sector has to build up healthy capital, which guarantees the ability of the banking system to finance investments of the real economy and which must be able to counteract excess risk taking.

Now the ball is in the corner of the Commission. Although the resolution is not binding for the Commission, the pressure on it to act, however, is great. A large conference of the platform “Regulate Global Finance Now!” – to which AK and ÖGB are also affiliated - on the Financial Transaction Tax will take place next Monday in Brussels, where the Austrian State Secretary of the Ministry of Finance Andreas Schieder will also comment on the Financial Transaction Tax. The launch event of the campaign for strict regulation and supervision of financial markets and for the introduction of a financial transaction tax took place in Vienna last week, under the patronage of AK and ÖGB.

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