The second list includes countries like EU candidates Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Morocco, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong.
It also includes entities that are considered as being among the main tax havens but which have promised to change their legislation: Bermuda, the Cayman Islands as well as UK-associated Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
Eight countries and territories recently hit by hurricanes - Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos, US Virgin Islands - were given a grace period until February to come up with commitments.
The list
excludes the most active harmful tax countries or jurisdictions
including Benelux, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Switzerland, British channel
islands, US Delaware, Singapore or Hong-Kong. Even Bermuda, that hosts
the Paradise’s offshore services firm Appleby, did not make it to the
list.
Jan Willem Goudriaan, General Secretary of EPSU, said “This
tax havens list is a big sham. EU Finance Ministers have failed to
agree a coherent and transparent blacklist with deterring sanctions to
make it effective. Coupled with the cuts in corporate taxes in many EU
countries, today’s decision means that tax competition in and outside
Europe will continue to run the show at the expense of workers’ wages
and quality public services.
It also means that
trade unions, NGOs, investigative journalists and whistleblowers will
need to continue to do the transparency job that governments are not
willing to do.”
Nick Crook, head of international for the UK's largest public services trade union UNISON said: “It’s
disappointing that this list fails to name some of the world’s biggest
tax haven offenders. The international community needs to do much more
to tackle tax avoidance, and offshore tax scams that are happening on a
grand scale. The richest individuals in our society should be making the
biggest contribution to our public services – not hiding money abroad,
and shirking their obligations”
On the international scene,
as tax rules for the digital economy are being discussed, this list is a
sign that the EU is losing its credibility on fair tax.
EPSU is the European Federation of Public Service Unions.
It is the largest federation of the ETUC and comprises 8 million public
service workers from over 260 trade unions; EPSU organises workers in
the energy, water and waste sectors, health and social services and
local, regional and central government, in all European countries
including the EU’s Eastern Neighborhood. EPSU is the recognized regional organization of Public Services International (PSI). For more information please go to: http://www.epsu.org
