Austria's finance minister has said he expected a big majority of European Union countries to agree to co-operate on harmonising corporate tax bases during his country's six-month EU presidency.
The move to use previously unused treaty provisions for "enhanced co-operation" to circumvent the EU's unanimity rule on tax issues is likely to alarm Britain and Ireland, which have fiercely resisted any steps towards harmonising taxes.
But Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser said he expected a political deal by between 17 and 22 of the 25 EU states to move forward in the first half of this year, although agreeing the common tax base would take far longer.
"The decision that I expect is going forward with a clear defined number of countries working on that issue on the basis of enhanced cooperation," he said, adding that the move would send a positive signal to business, encouraging cross-border economic activity.
The aim would be to agree on what income companies should be taxed rather than setting a common tax rate, but opponents see it as a foot in the door for eventual equalisation of rates that could stop individual European countries offering lower business taxation to attract investment.
Mr Grasser, who will chair the EU council of finance ministers for the next six months, said EU countries should aim to balance their budgets on average in 2010 by reducing their underlying deficits by 0.5 percentage points a year using improved growth.