The EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, according to a report by The Times, said he would be pressuring Malta and the other jurisdictions to change their tax practices to be more transparent.
“Obviously many countries in the European Union are places where aggressive tax optimisation finds its place,” Moscovici told reporters in Brussels on 18 December.
List shrinks
The comments were made by Moscovici, who is the former French finance minister, ahead of an EU finance ministers’ meeting to discuss non-EU tax havens.
The ministers are expected to whittle down the blacklist, which was released last month, from 17 jurisdictions to nine.
The jurisdictions expected to be removed from the list are Panama, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Grenada, Macao, Mongolia and Tunisia. Once removed they will join 47 countries on the so-called EU “grey list”.
Oxfam has heavily criticised the list from the outset and said Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and Netherlands should be included for it.
Moscovici denied this, but said to The Times: “If you realise that the tax flows go to this or that country: Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus… let’s talk about how to solve things.”
Still on the list
The jurisdictions that will stay on the list are American Samoa, Bahrain, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Namibia, Palau, Saint Lucia, Samoa and Trinidad and Tobago.
No US territories will be removed, despite the country’s Treasury Department slamming the list on 8 January, saying it “undermines” international standards.
The Treasury said American Samoa and Guam should not be on the list as they were already subject to high international tax standards.
