The European Commission said Wednesday that the EU's five biggest economies already had the legal tools they need to exchange more information between them in a move to clamp down on secret bank accounts held abroad.
Flags in the Alpine resort of Gstaad, in the Swiss canton of Bern last September ahead of vote on the removal of a controversial low-tax deals for wealthy foreigners. The European Commission said that the EU's five biggest economies already had the legal tools they need to exchange more information between them in a move to clamp down on secret bank accounts held abroad.
The European Union executive's intervention came as French President Francois Hollande vowed to "eradicate" tax havens, increase checks on officials' finances and crack down on tax cheats as he grappled with a scandal over an ex-minister's secret Swiss bank account.
Inspired by a 2010 US law which moves toward automatic sharing of bank account information, on Tuesday Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain said they had agreed to work on setting up a multilateral information exchange facility they hope will serve as a template for a wider system.
Emer Traynor, spokeswoman for EU Tax Commissioner Algirdas Semeta, welcomed the aims of the initiative, but said the EU had already produced instruments that could meet the same objectives and "faster" than the laborious process for agreeing new laws between what will soon be 28 EU member states.
Traynor said an existing directive covering administrative cooperation across internal EU borders and due to become operational in 2015 for five categories of holdings -- although two of those remain blocked -- allows for progress among all EU member states, "rather than at five."
This would be more effective, she said.
She also urged governments to back a long-blocked savings law update.
The Commission is seeking a mandate to negotiate with neighbouring countries, especially the non-EU banking haven of Switzerland.
"But again, we need agreement from member states before we can proceed," she said.
Austria and Luxembourg are the only EU members that do not participate in an automatic exchange of information on EU residents who have bank accounts in their countries. Luxembourg has now announced however that it is prepared to lift the controversial measure.
Austria has only gone as far as to say that it is prepared to discuss it.