THEEuropean Union has updated its blacklist of tax havens. In the new list of villains drawn up on Tuesday by Ecofin, which brings together EU finance ministers, 10 countries entered: Aruba, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Dominica, United Arab Emirates, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Oman and Vanuatu.
These new entries join Samoa, Guam, Trinidad and Tobago and the Virgin Islands, the (only) five offshore centers so far considered uncooperative in terms of combating tax evasion.
THEItaly had asked to postpone entry into the UAE black listbut was not satisfied. The Treasury Minister, Giovanni Tria, has tried to remedy with a compromise solution, by passing an amendment according to which as soon as the Emirates - which have promised to comply, but whose legislative process is rather slow - have fixed the their tax rules, they will immediately get off the list.
On the other hand, entry into the list does not imply any sanction: it is simple political pressure from the EU.
But that's not all: there is also the chapter “Great Excluded”.
Oxfam, a confederation of non-profit organizations that fight against poverty, has in fact criticized the EU for having left some full-blown tax havens are not on the blacklist like Panama (in 2016 at the center of the biggest international tax scandal of all time, the “Panama Papers"), Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Isole Cayman, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey or Hong Kong. Some of them, evidently, could count on the support of more influential countries than Italy.
“EU governments – attacks Oxfam – have left out some of the worst tax havens in the world and jeopardized the credibility of the entire blacklisting process”.
The list does not even include countries such as Ireland, Holland, Luxembourg, Cyprus e Malta, real tax havens within the EU which, in the same Ecofin meeting on Tuesday, also scuttled the project for a European Web Tax.
After all, the current president of the European Commission is Jean-Claude Juncker, who in the past was prime minister and finance minister of Luxembourg for a long time and did not a little work to make the Grand Duchy a tax haven.
