Martin Schulz, PE: "The elimination of tax havens, a Herculean task that will bring benefits"

The elimination of tax havens all over the world will be a Herculean task, but that will bring huge benefits, says the president of the European Parliament, (PE), Martin Schulz, who went on to say that for that reason, the EU needs to promise that it will take steps towards that goal.

Yesterday, the European leaders at the EU summit in Brussels, were to looking to set a deadline by the end of the year to eliminate the banking secret, in hope of recouping the "lost" taxes of thousands of billions of Euros in a time when the Eurozone is in a recession.

According to a document obtained by AFP, the region's leaders were going to ask for the adoption of the norms concerning the automated exchange of information about bank accounts "prior to the end of 2013".

Before the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Tax fraud and the prevention of a real exchange of information needs to end".

But achieving an automated exchange of bank data in the EU depends on the negotiations on that subject which that the European bloc will conduct with Switzerland and other tax havens.

We keep reminding that Austria and Luxemburg recently tried to postpone the elimination of banking secret, as the officials of the two countries explained that they can't accept an automated exchange as long as other countries that are not in the EU do not follow the same set of rules. On the other hand, Austria and Luxemburg have accepted to grant a mandate to the European Union to lead negotiations in that regard with Switzerland, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Liechtenstein.

Luxemburgese prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday said that his country will only eliminate banking secrecy only if other countries do the same: "We will abandon the banking secrecy and we will turn towards automated exchange of information which we want to introduce on January 1st, 2015, but this requires negotiations with third party countries, especially Switzerland".

His Austrian peer, Werner Faymann, noted the same thing: "We want the data exchange to take place with third-party countries as well".

By the time the newspaper went to print, the Brussels summit was still ongoing, and some sources quoted by the international press agencies were saying that the attention of the participants had turned towards the way some big companies avoid the payment of taxes, such as "Amazon", "Google" and "Apple", all of them from the US. According to the sources, France and Great Britain have expressed their fears over the scope of the schemes by which companies avoid paying taxes, using legislative loopholes.

It is worth mentioning that in the beginning of this week, US Congress has accused "Apple" of only paying 2% in taxes on profits of 74 billion dollars made outside the US, by exploiting a loophole in the fiscal legislation of Ireland. Similar information had previously appeared about the British division of "Amazon", and about the operations which "Google" and "Starbucks" run in Great Britain.

British prime minister, David Cameron yesterday urged the EU leaders to support the global action against tax evasion and to take action, as it is causing nations "staggering" losses.