The contribution of the European Union to the international fight against tax evasion

The lecture presents the recent European Union’s initiatives aiming at combating the practice of tax evasion and their relationship with the international fight against this phenomenon. More specifically, it analyses the main rules introduced by EU Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (2016/1164), which has transferred into the EU legal order several principles of the OECD “BEPS action” against tax evasion. It explores the nature of the ATAD rules, their relationship with the EU institutional settings, their impact on the free movement principle as built by the ECJ’s case law, their impact on international investment agreements, as well as their contribution to the European Union’s standing as an international actor in this field.

Discussant:

Professor Werner Haslehner, University of Luxembourg

Speaker

Professor Rebecca-Emmanuela Papadopoulou (PhD UCLouvain) is, since 2000, a member of the Department of International and EU Law Studies of the School of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She teaches EU Institutional Law, EU Economic Law and EU Tax Law. She has taught EU Tax Law as a Visiting Professor at the International Tax Center (Leiden) and she has taught EU Law at the National School of Public Administration.

She is the author of four monographs (Principes généraux du droit et droit communautaire, 1996; Cooperation in the Law of the European Union. An attempt to a typology, 2005; Soft Law in the legal order of the European Union, 2012; Coordination of economic policies in the EU and the financial crisis, 2017) and she has published several articles in Greek, English and French the field of EU institutional, economic and tax law.

She is a Lawyer at the Athens Bar.

Discussant

Since June 2015, Werner Haslehner has been Full Professor and the holder of the ATOZ Chair for European and International Taxation at the University of Luxembourg, where he is also the Course Director for the Master in European and International Taxation LL.M. programme. Prof. Haslehner specialises in international tax law, tax policy and European law, frequently publishing and lecturing on these topics in and outside Europe. He is also interested in the integration of economic and legal research, and holds a Master’s degree in business and economics in addition to his legal education.