Athens, 02/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - Austria wants what it believes is a possible agreement in May on the general contours of the first phase of a financial transactions tax (FTT) on shares and certain derivatives.
The finance ministers of the eleven countries involved in the enhanced cooperation mechanism to introduce an FTT (Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain, Estonia and Slovakia) met early on Wednesday morning ahead of the Ecofin Council to work on the tax. Austrian Finance MNinister Michael Spindelegger gave this newsletter a briefing (interview by EL).
Agence Europe: What progress was made despite the absence of the French finance minister?
Michael Spindelegger: I think we are very clear about the FTT that we really would like to implement it soon. We have decided about differences we had in the past, that we would start with shares and some derivatives. The technical points are not so clear at the moment, what kind of derivatives we should implement. In the first place, we have given a mandate to our technical support team to simply find the right wording for that because we would like not only to start with shares but also with derivatives. I think it is really necessary to come up with such a solution in the first stage, and then in step two we could include other derivatives also, ending maybe with all bonds. It is time to decide what the timetable is and we agreed today that we will find time for a new meeting on the fringes of the next Ecofin just to say what the political solution is for us and then, if we have these guidelines on this political side, we will find the technical drafts that are necessary to achieve this FTT among the eleven states.
Where does the real problem reside?
It's very difficult to define what kind of derivatives are very much linked to shares. I think the common ground is that we should implement those derivatives that are depending on shares but you know, derivatives, there is a huge field of different financial products that include derivatives, so we have to see how we could come forward to the next time. The technical briefing will bring to the table, I hope, how we could define this first step that we would implement.
Do you believe agreement will be reached in May?
Political agreement on how to proceed. I think it's not possible to come up with a real legal draft, it's up to the Commission to do that afterwards, but it would be good if we could have a political communication on what we want to be the first step. For that, I'm optimistic that we will bring something on the way.