This is a change which we wanted, said Minister of Finance Peter Kažimír, regarding the decision of several global tax jurisdictions to make changes, according to which they will no longer be perceived as tax havens from the perspective of the European Union. Kažimír welcomed a decision on Tuesday's EU Finance Ministers meeting (ECOFIN) in Brussels, saying that eight countries were now cleared from the blacklist of tax havens.
The list of countries which have been moved from the blacklist to a new, so-called 'grey list' include Barbados, Grenada, South Korea, Macao, Mongolia, Panama, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia.
"This is exactly what we wanted to start happening, whereby some countries which had business models based on luring financial groups and individuals who did not want to pay taxes or publish their assets, to start making changes so that everyone had the same conditions," said Kažimír.
According to him, this is also good news for Slovakia which has an "honest business model" based on car production, engineering and industry as such. "We have to make sure that others who are in charge of financial services make sure their conditions are adequate and that we all have equal opportunities," he explained. Kažimír also rejected criticism from some MEPs who said that the deletion of eight countries from the black list of tax havens occurred too quickly, with EU finance ministers publishing this list in only December of 2017.
"We did a good job," said Kažimír on behalf of the EU, reminding that efforts made in this direction were as a result of the Slovak presidency of the EU Council in 2016, though he also pointed out that this is only the beginning of the process and not all countries involved may make the necessary changes as quickly as desired.
