The European Union (EU) has named 17 states in its first ever tax haven blacklist, French Minister of Finance Bruno Le Marie announced Tuesday in Brussels.
“We have adopted at EU level a list of states which are not doing enough to fight tax evasion,” French finance minister Bruno Le Maire told journalists at a meeting of the 28 EU Finance Ministers in Brussels.
According to a diplomatic source, the 17 countries on the blacklist are: Bahrain, Barbados, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Grenada, Guam, Marshall Islands, Macau, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Samoa, American Samoa, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Tunisia, said the AFP.
Le Maire said that other 47 jurisdictions are included in a public “gray” list of countries that are currently not compliant with EU standards but have committed to change their tax rules.
Three criteria for establishing the list:
The 28 EU Member States screened a total of 92 jurisdictions (states and territories) that could pose a problem, considering three criteria:
Fiscal transparency: Do they practice automatic exchange of information or not?
Tax Fairness: Do they apply or not, for example, harmful preferential tax measures?
Do they implement or not OECD measures against aggressive tax optimization?
