BRUSSELS: A new draft plan to introduce a financial transactions tax (FTT) in euro zone states is likely to be rejected by Belgium, the country’s finance minister said on Monday, adding to doubts about a project already mired in division.
A European FTT was first proposed in 2012 during the euro zone debt crisis and the number of countries backing it has shrunk to ten out of Europe’s 28 states.
Belgium, one of the remaining supporters, was not going to leave the FTT negotiations immediately “but it cannot be denied that the present drafts are unacceptable”, Belgian Finance Minister, Johan Van Overtveldt, said in a statement.
He made clear that the supporting countries remained divided over the project. “From the discussion with the other member states we can conclude that there is no consensus,” he said.
Van Overtveldt said the latest version of the tax might hurt its financial sector and is also likely to have negative consequences on companies and the country’s borrowing costs.
Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain are still interested in the FTT and Estonia may join the project although it has refused to sign a joint commitment to reach a deal on the issue by mid-2016.
“We have not been notified in any way that Belgium might withdraw from the FTT. Belgium has been a very supportive presence throughout the negotiation process,” a European Commission spokeswoman said on Monday.
The EU commissioner for economic and tax issues, Pierre Moscovici, was among the proponents of the FTT when he was France’s finance minister.
