欧盟委员会主席身陷卢森堡避税丑闻

BRUSSELS — Less than a week after taking over as head of the European Union’s executive arm, Jean-Claude Juncker, the former longtime leader of Luxembourg, was buffeted Thursday by a flood of leaked documents detailing his home country’s role as a haven for hundreds of companies seeking to drastically reduce their tax bills.

布鲁塞尔——在成为欧盟执行机构负责人不到一周后，曾长期担任卢森堡首相的让-克洛德·容克 (Jean-Claude Juncker)于周四惨遭厄运打击，大量泄密文件详细描述了他的祖国成为数百家公司的避税天堂的情况，这些公司试图大幅减少税收账单。

While Luxembourg’s finance minister denounced as illegal the unauthorized release of the embarrassing tax documents, pressure mounted on Mr. Juncker, who was Luxembourg’s prime minister from 1995 until last year, to clarify his involvement in tax avoidance schemes.

虽然卢森堡的财政部长谴责称不经授权公布令人尴尬的税收文件属于非法行为，但容克面临压力，需要澄清自己在实施避税计划中所扮演的角色，容克从1995年开始一直到去年都是卢森堡首相。

“It is ridiculous to claim this was going on unbeknownst to Juncker — he was in charge,” Egide Thein, a former director of the Luxembourg Economic Development Bureau, a government body, said in a telephone interview. “Tax evasion was a willful policy of the Luxembourg government, which always justified this by saying it was not its job to act as a tax man for foreign countries.”

“说容克不知情非常荒谬，他是首相，”政府机构——卢森堡经济发展局(Luxembourg Economic Development Bureau)前局长埃吉德·泰恩(Egide Thein)接受电话采访时说。“卢森堡政府有意实施逃税政策，他们总是称充当外国的税务人员不是他们的工作，以此为自己辩解。”

The documents also raised questions about whether Mr. Juncker’s tenure in Luxembourg, a country that the Tax Justice Network, a research group in London, once branded the “death star” of financial secrecy in Europe, now conflicted with his current duties, which include enforcing fair competition among European Union countries.

这些文件还引发了相关问题，即容克在卢森堡的职位是否与现在的职责——比如在欧盟国家维持公平竞争——存在冲突。卢森堡曾被伦敦研究机构税收正义网(Tax Justice Network)称为欧洲金融保密领域的“死星”。

Tax avoidance, as legal ways of slashing or even eliminating tax bills are known, has become a highly sensitive political issue across Europe. The public has little patience for corporate welfare at a time when governments, struggling with low economic growth and high unemployment, have trimmed their budgets, often under pressure from the European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, now headed by Mr. Juncker.

避税——减少甚至消除税收账单的合法途径，已经成为欧洲地区高度敏感的政治问题。当政府为应对经济增长缓慢、高失业率问题而削减预算的时候，公众对企业收益的事是没什么耐心的。削减预算的举措通常是迫于欧盟执行机构欧盟委员会(European Commission)的压力实施的，该委员会目前由容克领导。

The resentment has fed growing disenchantment with the European Union — a malaise that Mr. Juncker has said he hoped to cure — and, on occasion, violent protests. In Brussels, the headquarters of the bloc’s administrative apparatus, riot police clashed with protesters on Thursday during a large demonstration against spending cuts proposed by the new Belgian government.

这种厌恶情绪促使民众对欧盟的希望日益破灭——容克曾表示希望治愈这种痼疾——有时还会引发暴力抗议。周四，在欧盟行政机构的总部所在地布鲁塞尔，反对比利时新政府削减开支计划的大型示威活动，引发防暴警察与抗议者的冲突。

The leaked tax documents, released Wednesday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, relate to the tax affairs of global companies like PepsiCo, Ikea and FedEx, and shined a bright light on practices in Luxembourg, a tiny country of less than 550,000 that allowed hundreds of big companies to pay little tax either in Luxembourg or in the countries where they do much of their business.

国际调查记者同盟(International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)周三公布的泄密税收文件涉及百事(PepsiCo)、宜家(Ikea)和联邦快递(FedEx)等跨国公司的纳税情况，曝光了它们在卢森堡的避税行为。这个人口不足55万的弹丸小国让数百家大型公司在该国或其他存在大量业务的国家可以只缴纳很少的税款。

Mr. Juncker, who took over as the head of the European Commission last weekend after divisive jockeying among member states, did not answer questions on Thursday and canceled a scheduled public appearance at an event in Brussels.

在经过欧盟成员国的激烈争夺后，容克于上周末成为欧盟委员会主席。周四，容克没有回答问题，并取消了在布鲁塞尔公开露面参与活动的计划。

Sven Giegold, the spokesman on economic and financial policy for the Green group in the European Parliament, voiced outrage over Luxembourg’s policies and questioned Mr. Juncker’s ability to act as evenhanded arbiter, as his new job in Brussels requires.

欧盟议会绿党(Green)经济及金融政策发言人斯文·吉格尔德(Sven Giegold)称，自己对卢森堡的政策感到非常愤怒，并对容克在新工作岗位上所需要的公平仲裁者的能力表示质疑。

“These revelations are a major blow to the credibility of new commission president Juncker and his capacity to act for the public interest,” Mr. Giegold said in a statement. “The fact that E.U. commission president Juncker served as Luxembourg’s finance and prime minister throughout this period makes him directly complicit in this mass corporate tax avoidance.”

“这些信息使人们对新任欧盟委员会主席容克的可信度，以及他代表公众利益行事的能力产生了很大的怀疑，”吉格尔德在声明中称。“欧盟委员会主席容克在这段时间担任卢森堡财政部长和总理的事实，使他与这起大规模企业逃税案产生了直接联系。”

The European Commission does not have the authority to determine the tax laws of member states, which zealously guard their sovereignty over such matters. But it has begun far-reaching investigations of whether countries have given illegal “state aid” to companies by offering them sweetheart tax deals that created unfair competition. Mr. Juncker’s suitability to oversee such investigations fairly is now a central issue.

欧盟委员会无权决定其成员国的税法，这些成员国也通常会积极捍卫它们对于此类问题的主权。但是，委员会已经展开大规模调查，看看这些国家是否曾通过私下提供税务协议，非法对企业进行“国家援助”，从而引起不公平竞争。目前，容克是否能公平监管此类调查，成了一个中心议题。

A spokesman for the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, said Mr. Juncker was “determined to enforce the rules” of the European Union in each of the bloc’s 28 member states. He added that Mr. Juncker would not recuse himself from any eventual decisions to be taken by the commission in cases involving Luxembourg’s tax affairs. Mr. Juncker “cannot abstain” because he presides over the commission, Mr. Schinas said.

欧盟委员会发言人马加里蒂斯·斯希纳斯(Margaritis Schinas)说，容克已“决意”在欧盟的28个成员国中“强行实施这些规定”。他还表示，对于欧盟委员会在与卢森堡相关的税务案件中所做的一切最终决定，容克都不会为自己辩护。斯希纳斯说，由于容克是欧盟委员会的负责人，所以他“无法逃脱”。

The comments suggested that Mr. Juncker would fight hard to avoid any curbs on his authority at such an early stage in his five-year mandate.

这些言论说明，容克将与所有限制他的权威的行为展开激烈斗争，毕竟现在仍处于他五年任期的早期。

As head of the commission, Mr. Juncker presides over commissioners who each have a specific policy area, including ones responsible for tax policy and for leading inquiries into possible violations of competition rules.

作为委员会负责人，容克还负责管理专事不同政策领域的委员，其中有些委员负责税务政策，还有人负责调查违反竞争规定的行为。

In a statement on Thursday, Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition commissioner, who is leading investigations into tax breaks for Apple, Starbucks and Amazon, avoided any criticism of Mr. Juncker, her boss. She said she had not had time to assess the leaked documents, which include so-called comfort letters — effectively private tax rulings — provided to more than 300 companies in Luxembourg.

欧盟委员会负责竞争的委员玛格丽特·韦斯塔格尔(Margrethe Vestager)——他正在负责调查苹果(Apple)、星巴克(Starbucks)和亚马逊(Amazon)是否存在税务违规行为——在周四的声明中，没有对她的老板容克提出任何批评。她说，她还没时间查看泄露的文件，其中包括提供给卢森堡300多家公司的所谓的告慰函——这些其实是私下的税收裁决。

Mr. Schinas announced Mr. Juncker’s canceling of his participation in a conference on Thursday, implying it had nothing to do with the furor over tax avoidance. He said Mr. Juncker had dropped out of “Good Morning Europe,” an event organized by French and Belgian news media, because another panelist, Jacques Delors, a former head of the European Commission, was too ill to attend.

斯希纳斯宣布，容克将不参加周四的一次会议，并暗示这与逃税事件所引起的愤怒没有任何关系。他说，由于欧盟委员会前负责人、另一名小组成员雅克·德洛尔(Jacques Delors)病情严重，无法参加法国和比利时媒体所组织的“早安欧洲”(Good Morning Europe)，所以容克也决定不参加。

Some commentators said that Mr. Juncker’s past roles in Luxembourg would work to the benefit of those who sought changes.

有些评论人士称，容克此前在卢森堡担任的职务将有利于那些寻求变革的人。

“It’s good to have Juncker as the president of the commission as he’ll now have to act on this,” said Karel Lannoo, the chief executive of the Center for European Policy Studies, a research organization in Brussels. “It is a scandal that so little has been done.”

“让容克担任委员会主席是好事，因为他现在必须对此采取行动，”布鲁塞尔研究机构欧洲政策研究中心(Center for European Policy Studies)的首席执行官卡雷尔·兰诺(Karel Lannoo)说。“这个丑闻一直都被忽视。”