While Germany recently announced that the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) would be a key topic of its future EU Council Presidency, negotiations between the ten participants in the enhanced cooperation - namely Germany, France, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Greece, Spain, Italy and Slovakia - seem to have resumed.
In a letter sent in early April to EU Taxation Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz considers that "significant progress has been made in negotiations", and hopes that an agreement can be concluded "in the near future".
The letter, of which EUROPE has seen a copy, also asks the Commission whether it is possible to add a provisional clause in the legal text allowing countries that have already introduced a tax on financial instruments at national level to participate in enhanced cooperation. This is, according to Olaf Scholz, an essential condition "to complete the negotiations successfully".
The German Minister also asked the Commission for clarification on the process of accession to enhanced cooperation, in particular on the applicability of Article 331 TFEU instead of Article 329 TFEU.
Germany took the lead in the negotiations by presenting a proposal for a final text (see EUROPE 12387/19) last December, which maintains a model inspired by the French FTT, whose rate is set at 0.2% and which is mainly due on purchases and sales of shares in listed companies with a market capitalisation of more than €1 billion.
But the text has been criticised on several occasions, notably by Austria, which in January threatened to withdraw from enhanced cooperation (see EUROPE 12408/3), considering the German proposal to be too far removed from the Commission's initial ambitions.
According to a new version of the compromise text, published by Politico on Tuesday 28 April, other exemptions have been added, notably for pension funds - evidently to meet a request from Belgium and Slovakia - and employee share ownership plans. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)