The committee was set up at a meeting in Brussels on 12 July and has 65 members.  Werner Langen was elected chair, with Ana Gomes, Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner, Fabio de Masi and Eva Joly, French member of the European Greens named as members.

Langen is a German politician and member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, and entered the European parliament in 1994. Since then, he has been a member of the committee on economic and monetary affairs, with oversight of a number of key financial reforms including the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR)  and the Insurance Mediation Directive (IMD 2) in 2015.

The move was prompted by the release of some 11.5m documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama, which showed details of bank accounts and offshore companies used as tax avoidance vehicles.

The EU statement of objectives for the inquiry said: ‘Although thorough analysis of the documents is still needed, these records apparently show that Mossack Fonseca created more than 214,000 offshore entities in 21 jurisdictions considered as tax havens connected to people in more than 200 countries and territories.’

The Committee is required to submit its final report by June 8, 2017, when its mandate from the European parliament will expire.

Former Polish Foreign Minister and Professor of economics Dariusz Rosati was elected group spokesman in the committee. ‘We want the work of the Panama committee to be fruitful and not driven by populist demand. We want an honest inquiry which would make recommendations for further legislation in the EU and promote our standards at international level. We plan to invite the law firm Mossack Fonseca and representatives of the Panama government to testify in the committee", Rosati said.

Details of the committee’s mandate are here.