Luxembourg, 16/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - The finance ministers of the countries participating in the enhanced cooperation on the financial transactions tax (FTT) decided on Thursday 16 June to set up two task forces to look into two controversial issues still open between now and September.
One of these taskforces will be responsible for examining exemptions to be set in place to ensure that the sovereign debts do not suffer as a result of the future tax, apparently by request of Belgium. This issue is related to the scope of application for derivatives.
The other will seek solutions on collecting the tax and the potential income from it, which is an important issue to Slovenia and Slovakia, as they fear that the tax will cost more to implement than it will bring in. This necessarily means a further missed opportunity for the Ten, despite the apparently positive rhetoric of the ministers who took position on the subject upon arrival at the Eurogroup. Initially, they had planned to agree on the outlines of the tax (core engine) in the course of June 2016.
The Austrian minister, Hans Joërg Schelling, who is informally chairing the discussions, spoke of “progress in many areas”. At this stage, he has not decided whether to pass the baton to one of his colleagues, but speculation is rife. Slovenia may take over in September. The French minister, Michel Sapin, said that the participating countries had “taken note of a possible agreement shared by nine or more countries”, in other words the minimum number for the enhanced cooperation to remain in place. All ten countries are on board, Sapin stressed. (Original version in French by Elodie Lamer)