Brussels, 05/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - “These lists are only assessments of countries, they do not include all countries. Personally I feel they should not have been published. Some EU countries should not feature on them because they have stated their willingness to cooperate,” said Czech Finance Ministre Miroslav Kalousek on Tuesday 5 May, referring to the black/grey/white lists on un-/barely,/sufficiently cooperative countries on exchanging tax information, drawn up by the OECD ahead of the G20 Summit. Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg were put on the grey list of countries which had given undertakings, but which had yet to put them into effect. This situation provoked the ire of Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Calude Juncker, who accused the European countries present at the meeting in London at the start of April of cowardice. Kalousek, who was chairing his last Ecofin Coucil before being replaced by Eduard Janota in the next Czech government, said he was “very sorry for Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg”.
In June the Ecofin Council will discuss the issue of fiscal governance, working from a specific communication presented by the Commission on Tuesday (see EUROPE 9891). One issue concerns the possible granting of mandates to the Commission to negotiate on behalf of the EU agreements on the exchange of fiscal information with non-European countries. Germany supports this. The United Kingdom felt that reflection had to be given on the most appropriate form of agreement. France asked about sanctions for non-cooperative countries. According to Austria, including provisions on the exchange of information in agreements is useless if the rules can be easily circumvented, for example, by creating legal structures that avoid taxation of savings. Luxembourg felt that eh Commission has changed its position on the review of the directive on savings taxation. (M.B./transl.rt)