On Thursday 12 January, Maltese Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, denied being the financial overlord of a tax haven.
"Any country that is competing on taxation but very strict on transparency and the exchange of information and anti-money laundering should not be branded as a tax haven", he explained to a group of journalists in Valletta.
The day before, the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament published a report describing the island as behaving like a tax haven. The report also unequivocally questioned whether Malta is in any position to steer the discussions on the EU's particularly busy taxation agenda.
Theoretically, the Greens/EFA report explained, businesses in Malta are subject to corporate taxation of 35%. However, when shareholders receive their dividends, they are reimbursed up to six sevenths of the tax paid by the company. After the reimbursement, therefore, the effective rate falls to 5%, or even 0% in certain cases.
According to Scicluna, if the reimbursements go to Germany, for instance, they are taxed there. He went on to say that in 2003, when the island joined the EU, the Directorate General of the European Commission and the Code of Conduct group of the Council on corporate taxation went through its practices with a fine-toothed comb. The OECD and other international organisations also find that the island is compliant with international standards, he concluded.
As regards the common consolidated corporate tax base (CCCTB), which is the subject of two legislative proposals of the Commission, the island is not terribly enthusiastic about it, but it will play its Presidency role as it should, he pledged.
Speaking from Luxembourg, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said that in matters of corporate taxation, the member states were going to have to move towards greater harmonisation. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)