26/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - In an interview to the Sunday weekly Bild am Sonntag, Joschka Fischer, German foreign affairs minister is proposing the introduction of a third rate for value added tax (VAT) on luxury products. In Germany there is currently a general VAT rate of 16% and a reduced rate of 7%. At a European level, the Ecofin Council is expected to reach an agreement before the end of the year, under the British presidency, on the difficult reduced VAT dossier. At the beginning of June it failed to reach an agreement on draft compromise presented by the Luxembourg presidency (EUROPE 8963). On the other hand, it did decide to extend the minimum rate of 15% for normal VAT to 2010.