EU President Defends Swiss Banking Secrecy

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

03 January 2002

Speaking on Swiss Italian television on Tuesday 1 January, Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, said that only the Swiss can decide what to do about their banking secrecy. "The European Union does not want to make Switzerland change its laws," said the commissioner.

Prodi's comments come two weeks after the Italian finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, criticized Swiss banking secrecy laws, and in the wake of the failure of talks aimed at creating an information-sharing regime that would allow the EU's Savings Taxation Directive to go ahead. While the Swiss are not directly to blame for the EU's difficulties, there is no doubt that their intransigent attitude towards banking disclosure has encouraged some EU member states to block the Directive.

The Italian minister was speaking in particular about funds hidden by Italians in Switzerland. Banking secrecy has prevented the Italian tax officials from turning up some of the huge sums thought to have been stashed abroad by their country's citizens. Tremonti had also said banking secrecy had to go in the interests of fighting terrorism. The Swiss economics minister, Pascal Couchepin, has already defended banking secrecy, denouncing what he called the Italian's strong-arm tactics.

While Prodi said the Swiss must decide alone, he did call for a more intense collaboration between the European Union and Switzerland in the years to come. The president of the European Commission would like to see more pan-continental laws.

"The events of 11 September show that in a globalized world, everybody has the same interests," he said. "No state can afford to have any grey areas."

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