Financial Transparency Coalition

Plenty of column inches have been given over to debating whether or not former Prime Minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker will become president of the European Commission in recent weeks. Politically speaking, potatoes don’t come much hotter, but we’re not really interested in that, and as not-for-profit organisations, we are completely non-partisan anyway. Assuming that he does get in, it is going to be really interesting to see how he will support the major strides that Europe has made promoting transparency and accountability in business.

In April 2013′s Taxcast: ‘offshore leaks’ blows the lid off secrecy for sale, the G20 endorse greater transparency (but let’s not get too excited), Luxembourg agrees to lift its banking secrecy, Austria next? And the Taxcast takes a look at fake foreign direct investment.

The European presidency has just issued a note advocating a push to increase financial transparency in Europe through its Savings Tax Directive. As they say:

"The Presidency attaches crucial importance to gear up bilateral talks in order to reach political agreement upon the adoption of the Savings Tax Directive in the very near future."

Unsurprisingly, there are some rather large flies in this ointment. Austria and Luxembourg have long been holdouts on the European Savings Tax Directive, working hard behind...

According to this article, Luxembourgian Finance Minister Luc Frieden has indicated to the European Union's Council of Finance Ministers (EcoFin) that the Grand Duchy is no longer opposed to automatic information exchange through the EU's savings tax directive (STD). If this is the case, we have cause for celebration, though we still don't know whether Austria will also fall into line and cooperate. The EU's STD is currently under review. The review process is considering broadening the directive's scope to include a wider range of incomes (it currently...