France says financial transaction tax talks deadlocked
PARIS (Reuters) - France's finance minister said on Thursday that talks among 10 European countries for a financial transaction tax had deadlocked amid reservations from Belgium, Slovakia and Spain.
France with Germany has led efforts to create the tax which was supposed to help recover public funds used to bail out banks during the financial crisis while curbing speculative trading.
However, the talks have dragged on since 2011 as the countries struggled to agree what instruments should be covered and at which tax rate.
"We have reached a point of deadlock," French Finance Minister Michel Sapin told a news conference, adding that the European Union's current Austrian presidency had not abandoned hopes of getting an agreement in June.
Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain originally agreed to create the tax.
But Estonia dropped out last year, leaving only 10 countries, dangerously close to the nine needed to pursue the project under EU rules, Sapin acknowledged.
Sapin said that Slovakia and Spain were not currently in a position to take a political decision on the tax while Belgium now had misgivings.
"We are really at the limit (of countries) necessary to go forward. I'm concerned given things are frozen, but France still wants to keep going and will push for it," he said.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Ingrid Melander)
