Italy, other states, raise objections on financial transactions tax
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Italy and other European states have expressed reservations on the scope of a common financial transactions tax (FTT) although some progress has been made on narrowing differences, Italy's finance minister said on Tuesday.
Germany and France proposed the FTT in 2012, with the euro zone debt crisis raging, as a way of correcting excesses in the financial sector that was blamed for the worst market turmoil and decline for decades. It has been debated ever since.
"There are Italian objections, as there are objections from other states, on many proposals" concerning the FTT, Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan told a news conference in Brussels the day after ministers met on the issue.
"Italy expressed reservation on a specific measure," Padoan said. The objection related to "the extension of the scope (of the tax) to some derivatives" that may be linked to sovereign bonds, he said.
Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling told reporters on Monday ahead of the meeting that countries interested in a common FTT had already agreed that derivatives linked to sovereign bonds would be outside the scope of the tax.
Only 11 of the EU's 28 members - Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain - are considering a joint FTT and it was their finance ministers who met on Monday after a regular meeting of euro zone ministers.
"We made progress, however, and the chapters on which there is more or less a definitive deal are many," Padoan added.
EU officials have signalled that a political deal on the FTT may be possible by the end of the year, although technical issues for applying the tax would take some time after that.
No agreement has been reached yet on the rate of the tax.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
