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Fair Taxation: EU updates list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions

On 18 February 2020 the EU Finance Ministers updated the EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions. Four countries/territories – Cayman Islands, Palau, Panama and Seychelles – have been added to the list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, as they failed to comply with the required standards within the deadline. These joined the eight jurisdictions – American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Samoa, Oman, Trinidad and Tobago, Vanuatu and US Virgin Islands – that were already on the list and remain non-compliant. By contrast, over half of the countries covered by the 2019 listing exercise have been completely delisted, as they are now in line with all of the tax good governance standards.

Next steps

The Commission and Member States will continue the dialogue with those jurisdictions on the list and the annex II (jurisdictions with pending commitments) in advance of the next update of the EU list in October 2020. Another priority is to monitor countries that have been cleared to ensure that they apply tax good governance in practice. The EU listing remains a dynamic process, which will continue to develop in the years ahead to keep pace with international developments. 

Following the update, Paolo Gentiloni, Commissioner for the Economy said: "The EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions is helping to deliver real improvements in global tax transparency. To date, we have examined 95 countries' tax systems and the majority of these now comply with our good governance standards. This process has led to the elimination of over 120 harmful tax regimes worldwide – and dozens of countries have started to apply tax transparency standards. Our citizens expect the wealthiest individuals and corporations to pay their fair share in tax and any jurisdiction that enables them to avoid doing that must face the consequences. Today's decisions show that the EU is serious about making that happen.”

Objectives of the EU List

The overall goal of the EU list is to improve tax good governance globally, and to ensure that the EU's international partners respect the same standards as EU Member States do.

The listing process

The list is a result of 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 OECD BEPS measures and substance requirements for zero-tax countries.

The criteria were agreed by Member States at the November 2016 ECOFIN and used as the basis for a screening "scoreboard".

The EU-List

The countries in the list below are those that refused to engage with the EU or to address tax good governance shortcomings (situation on 7 November of 2019).

EU Member States will continue to monitor the situation, to ensure that jurisdictions implement their commitments.

Listed jurisdictions will be removed from the list once they have addressed EU concerns.