WWF Statement on the Financial Transaction Tax in Europe



Posted on 05 December 2012  | 
Between September 28 and October 23 of 2012, 11 EU member countries formally indicated to the European Commission that they wished to proceed with a Financial Transaction Tax using the Enhanced Cooperation provisions of the EU Treaty, followed by the Commisison’s proposal on October 25th.

Those countries are Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia. The Netherlands has recently indicated it will join this group. The European Commission proposed that exchanges of shares and bonds would be taxed at 0.1 per cent and derivative contracts at 0.01 per cent. The initiative is estimated to generate revenues in the range of tens of billions of Euros, and could be implemented by 2014. The existing initiative does not specify what the funds will be used for, and without such agreement it will be left to the individual governments to allocate the funds as they deem appropriate.

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