Turkey has survived being included in the EU’s terrorist tax list, the media said on Thursday, despite failing to fulfill its obligations, Brussels is under pressure to avoid tensions with Ankara. The EU’s 27 member states will add the Cayman Islands, sources said, which is the first British overseas site to join the black list since Brexit.
Panama is yet to return to that black list of tax havens, with Seychelles and Palau being added. The list will be confirmed by EU finance ministers at a meeting in Brussels next Tuesday.
Although Turkey is failing to comply, a EU source said the country had “escaped from bad labor”. Turkey was in the process of introducing an automatic exchange of tax information with EU member states in 2019, but was “given more time for political reasons”, the source said, without further comment.
The EU is relying on Turkey to reduce the migration from war-stricken Syria, but relations have deteriorated since the political purges led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after an attempted coup in 2016. including the Panama Papers and LuxLeaks, forcing Brussels to do more to counter the tax cuts by multinationals and the rich.
EU member states cannot be on that list and the countries named are subject to limited restrictions, which include eliminating them without European aid or development funding. The black list of the EU currently includes eight countries or areas of law: American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Oman, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, the American and Vanuatu Islands.
