![]() Under EU rules, a minimum of nine countries can co-operate on legislation using a process called enhanced co-operation as long as a majority of the EU's 27 countries give their permission. Opinion is divided over whether banks would continue to trade at current levels and pay the tax or cut back on the number of trades, potentially saving pension schemes millions of pounds.Īlgirdas Semeta, the European commissioner in charge of tax policy, said: "This is a major milestone in tax history." "We will be able to put it into place quickly," said Benoit Hamon, a junior minister in the French finance ministry who was at the meeting.Ī tax would raise the costs of individual trades, which economists suspect are carried out by banks to extract commissions and fees from fund managers that handle large pension funds. Although critics say such a tax cannot work properly unless applied worldwide or at least across Europe, countries such as France are already banking on the extra income from next year. ![]() Following the decision, the European Commission will put forward a new proposal for the tax, which if agreed on by those states involved, would mean the levy could be introduced within months. The levy, which could raise as much as €35bn (£29.3bn) a year for the 11 countries, is designed to prevent a repeat of the conditions that stoked the credit crunch by reining in investment banks. The UK, which already imposes a tax on share trades, could benefit from a shift in banking business if Germany and France tax foreign exchange or derivatives trading in Frankfurt and Paris. ![]() Eleven countries won the EU's backing for a financial transaction tax (FTT), with Germany, France, Italy and Spain adding their names to eurozone neighbours Austria, Portugal, Belgium, Estonia, Greece, Slovakia and Slovenia.
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