Political consensus on ViDA prioritized during Belgian presidency

Taking over the presidency of the European Council from Spain on 1.1.2024, Belgium has presented its priorities of their 6 months term until 30.6.2024.

The Belgian presidency programme includes in its section on Economic and Financial Affairs the resolution to “work on narrowing the VAT gap”, which serves as the high-level political context to resume work on and push the “VAT in the Digital Age” (ViDA) initiative again.

In the ECOFIN working group on Economic and Financial Affaires, the ViDA initiative, introduced in December 2022 by the European Commission, is on the Agenda for “Political Consensus” to be reached by or on 14. May 2024.
At least, the (currently proposed) Agenda for this meeting (page 26) list “Legislative Deliberations” on this initiative. In the regular process, this requires prior preparation in the corresponding Working Party, in this case, the “Indirect Taxation” subgroup of the Working Party on Tax Questions.

Therefore, work should pick up soon and contributions may be required by member states as well as the representative bodies of the industry and the entire private sector.