Eurozone nations failed Tuesday to secure a deal on a controversial financial transactions tax but said they are aiming for an agreement in mid-2016 despite furious opposition from Great Britain. The plan was first proposed in 2011 to force banks and investment houses to pay for the excesses that led to the 2008 financial crash and the eurozone debt crisis but has been mired in disagreements ever since.
Yesterday, 10 eurozone countries said that they had agreed on fundamental aspects of the tax, but that Estonia had dropped out and they would not achieve their original aim of implementing the tax by January 2016. "We are completely of the spirit that a deal must be found before next summer," EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said after EU finance ministers met in Brussels.
The proposed tax has strong backing from Germany and France, the eurozone's top economic powers, but the talks have dragged on amid still unresolved quibbles over the scope of the tax, which financial products would be affected and at what rate. "The objective is to clarify all the open questions during the first half of 2016 and then countries can decide if they want to stay on board or not," said Austrian Finance Minister Hans-Joerg Schelling. Austria is the country leading the negotiations.
Supporters of the tax argue it can help avoid a repeat of the failings of the financial markets that plunged the world into crisis in 2008. "To do nothing, we will suffer the next major crisis," said Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's influential finance minister.
The tax is backed by France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. Britain is vehemently opposed to the tax as it fears it will apply to transactions that originate in its City of London global financial hub, meaning for instance that a British bank trading with a German bank would have those transactions taxed.
Blocking the ability of eurozone members clubbing together and forcing decisions on Britain has become a hot issue in the referendum on the U.K.'s membership in the 28-member bloc to be held by 2017. "We can challenge this financial tax in the European court if this implicates other states including the United Kingdom," Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne warned his EU counterparts. Holding up a draft of the latest proposal, he added: "If it's a proposal, fine... This is not an document that we will endorse in any form."
