Brussels calls on Switzerland to tax EU countries.Image: trapezoid
Brussels calls on Switzerland to tax EU countries. This is not easy for bourgeois politicians to accept. They are also annoyed by the EU's behavior: there is talk of “blackmail”.
Maya Brynner/ch media
New trouble comes from Brussels, in the final stages of negotiations on a new bilateral package. The EU hopes to reach a deal by the end of this year. Now, new controversy is brewing in another dossier: it concerns negotiations over changes to the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI). It's actually a technical issue.
But Brussels has made new demands, NZZ am Sonntag reports. “This summer, the EU informed Switzerland that, unlike Switzerland, the EU's authorization went beyond the revised scope of the AEOI,” the newspaper said, citing a confidential consultation document submitted to parliament by the Ministry of Finance and Foreign Affairs. The EU Council expanded this mandate.
Brussels is now demanding an agreement with Switzerland on “administrative assistance for the execution of foreign tax returns”: Swiss authorities should collect tax returns from their home country from EU resident citizens. This principle already applies within the EU.
Switzerland has so far resisted this. Now the Federal Council is apparently moving away from absolute resistance: it wants to try to “strictly limit” the new regulations so that they are rarely applied, NZZ am Sonntag reports. The federal Treasury has not taken a position on the matter.
Criticism of EU action
The EU's demands met with resistance from bourgeois politicians. “We have to enforce foreign laws. This is completely unacceptable to me,” senior vice-president state MP Franz Grüter told the newspaper. “We are becoming an extension of foreign tax authorities,” FDP national MP Christian Wasserfallen said of border crossings.
It is not just the requirement itself that is causing trouble, but the EU's actions: it is using revisions to the agreement to impose this – and this has clearly threatening consequences. As NZZ am Sonntag writes, the EU wants to reduce a provision of the AIA agreement that is important for Switzerland if Bern does not give in. As a result, the economy faces the threat of “hundreds of millions in negative tax impacts.”
EU Center MP Benedikt Würth said it was indescribable how the EU mixed irrelevant topics together. Senior Vice-President National Councilor Gruter even spoke of “blackmail”. Centrist leader Philipp Bregy also criticized the demand and the EU's action against X. “Incomprehensible!” he commented.
SP sees things completely differently. “It is absolutely right that we help other countries fight tax evasion,” SP co-president Cédric Wermuth told NZZ am Sonntag. In his view, negotiations on the AEOI agreement should be included in negotiations on a new EU treaty: “We would have gotten more from it if it had been part of the whole package.”
It is amid these talks that the new row emerges at a sensitive moment: it could anger centrist and FDP politicians and provide ammunition for the senior vice president to resist a new deal. (aargauerzeitung.ch)
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