VON/FROM: Peter Wahl
Dear friends,
The European Council, which is the summit of the European heads of state, today agreed today to introduce a bank levy in the EU and to advocate the FTT in the G20.
As for the bank levy the details should be carefully assessed, whichopens the door for a lot of watering down.
The FTT is conditioned to global acceptance. Merkel also tried to convince her colleagues to introduce the FTT in the EU but did not reach a consensus.
The final declaration reads as follows for the two issues: “The European Council agrees that Member States should introduce systems of levies and taxes on financial institutions to ensure fair burden-sharing and to set incentives to contain systemic risk. (The Czech Republic reserves its right not to introduce these measures.) Such levies or taxes should be part of a credible resolution framework. Further work is urgently required on their main features and issues of level playing field and cumulative impacts of various regulatory measures should be carefully assessed. The European Council invites the Council and the Commission to take this work forward and report back in October 2010.”
The EU should lead efforts to set a global approach for introducing systems for levies and taxes on financial institutions with a view to maintaining a world-wide level playing field and will strongly defend this position with its G20 partners. The introduction of a global financial transaction tax should be explored and developed further in that context.”
Best
Peter Wahl
WEED – Weltwirtschaft, Ökologie & Entwicklung
Eldenaer Str. 60, 10247 Berlin
Tel: +49-(0)30-2758 2616