The European Commission today put its support behind a plan to use a single rule to tax transactions by financial institutions as a way of contributing to the cost of the sovereign debt crisis.
Support for the harmonised financial transaction tax (FTT) could open another rift in Europe, where countries already diverge in their regulation of finance and where politicians have long argued over how best to control banks.
"I am delighted to see that 10 member states have indicated their willingness to participate in a common FTT along the lines of the Commission's original proposal," Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the EU executive, said in a statement.
"This tax can raise billions of euro of much-needed revenue for member states in these difficult times. This is about fairness: we need to ensure the costs of the crisis are shared by the financial sector instead of shouldered by ordinary citizens," he said.
The 10 countries are France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
They decided to push on with the introduction of the single tax after the idea, which was first floated by the Commission in September 2011, failed to win unanimous support among the EU's 27 member states in June.
To go ahead without the support of all 27, at least nine countries had to support it, enabling a legal process called enhanced cooperation, which makes it possible for only some member states to implement it.
Earlier this month, the Government stood behind an IFSC decision to stay outside the new FTT zone.
In September 2011, the Commission estimated that the harmonised tax would deliver €57 billion in revenues each year.
It proposed the charge should be imposed at a rate of 0.1 per cent on the trading of bonds and shares and 0.01 per cent for derivatives deals.
The plan by the 10 countries will now have to be accepted, via a qualified or enhanced majority vote, by the EU's members and get the support of European Parliament.
The Commission will prepare a new proposal for the tax, which will be based on last year's ideas, but adjusted to a membership of just the 10, rather 27 countries.
Widely known as a Tobin tax, after Nobel-prize winning US economist James Tobin who proposed one in 1972 as a way of reducing financial market volatility, the levy has become a political symbol as the debt crisis shakes the continent.
Proponents first tried to introduce the tax worldwide in 2008 via the Group of 20 major economies.
Faced with US, Swiss and Chinese opposition, they tried to persuade the 27-member European Union to lead the way, or even the 17-nation euro zone. But each group had its sceptics.
Following an aborted attempt to introduce its own such levy in the mid-1980s, Sweden has repeatedly warned that introducing the tax will simply drive trading elsewhere.
Britain, home to the region's biggest financial centre, London, will not join.
Reuters
