The European Parliament has voted in favor of amending the directive on taxation of savings income, with the objective of eliminating the tax opacity of Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria, and to curb tax havens. In a report adopted by the plenary is proposed that all Member States have, by July 2014 to share information fully tax on savings income.

The text, adopted by 351 votes to 27, with 20 abstentions, aims to improve the implementation of the directive on taxation of savings. Following the discovery in February 2008 of fraud in Liechtenstein, the Commission found that there were various ways to circumvent the implementation of this directive.
 
Therefore, the new directive aims to end the transitional period in 2014 to Austria, Belgium and Luxembourg to apply automatic exchange of information on interest payments received by financial institutions located in other Member States. In its place, these three countries are currently implementing a tax and revenue sharing with the State of residence of the recipient.

End of tax havens

In addition, the text adopted by the Economic Affairs Committee called on the EU to take steps to improve transparency in tax. Therefore, claiming that countries like Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Switzerland or United States apply the Model Agreement of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on exchange of tax information.
 
According to the speaker French Benoit Hamon, tax fraud in the EU amounting to more than 200 billion euros, representing more than 2% of GDP: "If you compare this amount with the plan to revitalize the economy by an amount equivalent to 1% of GDP in the European Union proposed by the European Commission in order to cope with the consequences of the financial crisis, the fight against fiscal fraud is emerging as an economic challenge of the highest order ", says .