Scuderi (Avs): “Tax windfall profits to invest in people’s needs”

Brussels – Taxing windfall profits to enable investment in healthcare, schools, education, energy, industry, and housing. This is the appeal that Benedetta Scuderi, MEP for the Green and Left Alliance, made today (9 October) on the programme “Coffee Break” on La7, just a few hours before the Ecofin’s decision to mandate the European Commission to assess the possibility of taxing energy companies’ windfall profits. “A budget deviation to make investments is absolutely necessary. If the government asks to take on debt, however, it must not do so for weapons, but precisely for those investments needed for the future of our citizens,” said Scuderi. “So it is right to do so for energy infrastructure, just as it would be entirely right for industrial renewal and decarbonisation, to have an industrial plan. Industry needs subsidies to be able to enter the new phase of green technologies,” she added. “The government says it’s all Europe’s fault, but I’d like to say to this very same government that the big oil companies are making incredible profits. So why must services for the public be cut while our government has decided not to tax billionaires? As far as we’re concerned, however, we must ask the super-rich to contribute, tax the windfall profits of the fossil fuel giants, and invest these resources in the things that people really need: healthcare, schools, education, energy, industry, and housing,” she concluded.