Luxembourg, 08/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 8 June, EU27 finance ministers agreed in principle on draft legislation to give more teeth to EU Regulation°1798/2003/EC on administrative cooperation to tackle value-added tax (VAT) fraud (see EUROPE 9958). The United Kingdom abstained due to parliamentary restrictions. The agreement in principle covers the creation, as soon as the new EU rules come into force, of a “Eurofisc” information exchange network for tackling VAT fraud, based on two informal multilateral cooperation networks, EUROCANET and AUTOCANET, set up by Belgium and in which Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom do not participate. Tuesday's political agreement states that member states will be free to choose whether they want to be part of Eurofisc, with a diplomat explaining that this was the price that had to be paid to reach agreement in principle. In order to step up the fight against VAT evasion in the supply of goods between EU countries, the regulation streamlines the use of information from member states' VAT databases. It introduces procedures to make this information more reliable and give member states access to relevant information in another country's database. Increased information requirements for member states' VAT databases will come into force in 2015. (M.B./transl.fl)