Event Description

Seminar 1 – Inside the EU Code of Conduct Group: 20 Years of Tackling Harmful Tax Competition by Martijn Nouwen

Convener: Yvette Lind, Assistant professor in tax law at Copenhagen Business School

Replaces cancelled event originally scheduled 7 February 

Martijn Nouwen’s dissertation analyzed the functioning and effectiveness of the diplomatic EU Code of Conduct Group in the fight against tax avoidance by multinational companies and against the facilitation thereof by harmful tax competition between Member States. Its uniqueness lies in its empirical approach, by evaluating how the Group has operated in practice – from both a governance and output/result perspective – by analyzing more than 2,500 internal EU-documents obtained through FOI-requests. His dissertation concludes that the Group has achieved impressive results in tackling harmful tax practices, but also that many forms of unfair tax competition have not been adequately addressed. It contains recommendations for improvement. Nouwen shared his findings with members of national Parliaments and the European Parliament. Several media reported about his PhD-research (e.g., Der Spiegel, InfoLibre, Mediapart, Expresso, Dagens Nyheter, NRC, Het Financieele Dagblad, NOS-Journal and Zembla). This political and societal attention encouraged policymakers to reform the Group.

For more information and access to an excerpt of the book (click here)

 Presenter

Martijn Nouwen is an Assistant Professor in Tax Law at Leiden Law School. His research and teaching focusses on international and EU tax law, with an emphasis on tax competition between countries, which is a major cause of unfairness in taxation of multinational companies. He obtained an LLM in both Dutch Tax Law and European and International Tax Law at the UvA. Before that, he graduated in Economics. In 2010, his master thesis was awarded the thesis prize of the Academy of Legislation (Ministry of Justice), as well as the thesis prize of the Dutch Tax Bar Association. In 2012, he started his academic career as a (part-time) PhD-researcher at the UvA, which he combined with working for an international tax law firm until 2020. In 2020, he obtained his PhD for his dissertation ‘Inside the EU Code of Conduct Group: 20 Years of tackling harmful tax competition’.

External discussant 

Werner Haslehner is Professor of Tax Law at the University of Luxembourg, where he holds the ATOZ Chair for European and International Taxation and is the Director of the LL.M. Programme in EU and International Tax Law. Before coming to Luxembourg in 2013, he held full-time academic positions at Johannes-Kepler-University Linz and the London School of Economics. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris 1 Sorbonne in 2018, the University of Turin in 2019, and a Global Research Fellow at NYU School of Law in 2020. He sits on the Academic Committee of the EATLP, the ECJ Task Force of CFE Tax Advisers Europe, and the Scientific Committee of the Luxembourg IFA branch. His research interests cover all aspects of international taxation, EU law, and tax policy.

External discussant 

Patrik Emblad is a Doctor of Laws (Jur.dr.) with a specialization in tax law at the School of Law, Business and Economics, University of Gothenburg. He primarily applies discourse theory within his research, with the aim to analyze various aspects of tax law. His doctoral thesis focuses upon the way in which private law is being constructed within a Swedish tax law context. Most recently, he has investigated how the concept of sovereignty to tax may serve to maintain inter-nation power relations.

Questions?
Feel free to contact organizer Yvette Lind at yl.law@cbs.dk