Mr. Pierre Moscovici:

I think it was a quite good proposal. It was discussed in the Council but agreement could not be reached. The Commission had three options. If we had put forward the same proposal the response would have been the same. We had to take on board specific remarks made by the Irish and when I speak to my Irish counterpart, Deputy Michael Noonan, he agrees that the new proposal is a different proposal, though I would not want to say it is his proposal. The second option would have been to renounce but we did not want to do that because we think the proposal is good in terms of fairness, simplicity, anti-avoidance and business. The third option was to propose a new CCCTB and that is what is on the table. It is not, however, the end of the story but the beginning of the discussion, as is the case with Brexit.