Tunisia has been removed from the European Union’s list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, announced the EU’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council (EcoFin) as it convened on Tuesday in Brussels.
“Eight jurisdictions have been removed from the EU’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, following commitments made at a high political level to remedy EU concerns. Tunisia, Barbados, Grenada, the Republic of Korea, Macao SAR, Mongolia, Panama, and the United Arab Emirates are moved to a separate category of jurisdictions subject to close monitoring,” the EcoFin said.
These eight jurisdictions were moved from annex I of the conclusions (non-cooperative jurisdictions) to annex II (co-operation with respect to commitments taken).
The European Council had announced its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions on December 5, 2017, after a thorough screening and dialogue process with non-EU countries, to assess them against agreed criteria for good governance. These criteria relate to tax transparency, fair taxation, the implementation of the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) measures and substance requirements for zero-tax countries.
The initiatl “blacklist” included Bahrain, Barbados, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Grenada, Guam, Marshall Islands, Macao SAR, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, American Samoa, Saint Lucia, Trinidad, Tobago and Tunisia.
TunisianMonitorOnline
