The EU on Thursday cleared the path to a long-awaited deal with Switzerland on offshore tax fraud that will in return see the Alpine state join the bloc's passport-free zone, officials said.
Ambassadors from the 25 EU member states, meeting at weekly talks, agreed on a compromise on the savings-tax accord to win the backing of Luxembourg, which is keen to protect its own lucrative banking industry.
The deal is set to be formally adopted by foreign ministers on Monday and signed at an EU-Switzerland summit on Wednesday, finally enabling the bloc to implement its new tax rules after nearly a decade of talks.
"Basically all of the outstanding issues have been agreed and we will hold the summit in Brussels on May 19," a spokesman for the EU's Irish presidency said.
Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey hailed Thursday's breakthrough as "an important political step."
But she warned in an interview on Swiss television that "we will not negotiate on banking secrecy."
The EU wants to clamp down on savings held by its residents in countries and territories beyond the reach of its tax authorities. It must reach a deal by June to allow the accord to take effect next January.
But first it must reach equivalent deals with third countries, not least with Switzerland, the world capital of secret banking.
Switzerland, like EU members Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg, last year agreed to levy a withholding tax on the savings and pass the money on to EU tax authorities.
The alternative adopted by the rest of the EU is to share information between their tax authorities. Switzerland and the EU trio were unwilling to do this for fear of eroding their banking secrecy.
Switzerland wanted an exemption from judicial cooperation in financial crimes that may in future apply to the 15-nation Schengen group. It does not recognise tax evasion as a crime. But Luxembourg was worried that its bankers might lose out if it was forced to accept such cooperation while Switzerland stayed out.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS