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EU finance ministers have decided today to remove eight countries from the EU’s blacklist for tax havens, rushing to take countries off the blacklist without it being clear what they have actually committed to improve.

Inequality, already extreme before COVID-19, has reached new levels. There is an urgent need for governments to implement highly progressive taxation measures that in turn must be used to invest in powerful and proven measures to reduce inequalities.

EU finance ministers today discussed the future "EU blacklist" for tax havens. The proposal says that a 0% tax rate will only be seen as an "indicator" that a particular country or a tax jurisdiction should be screened - but that further analysis will be required before they end up on any blacklist.In reaction, Oxfam’s EU tax expert Aurore Chardonnet said:“It's welcome that the EU now accepts that a 0% tax rate is potentially harmful, but it is more serious than simply being an ‘indicator’ that warrants investigation. A 0% tax…

At the meeting of the European Council in Tallinn today France, Germany, Italy and Spain called for an agreement on new measures to tax tech giants, like Google and Amazon. Currently, disparate tax laws allow large companies to pay disproportionately low effective tax rates in the EU.

The coronavirus pandemic has swept across a world unprepared to fight it. Only one in six countries assessed for the CRI Index 2020 were spending enough on health, and in more than 100 countries at least one in three workers had no labour protection such as sick pay.

In response to calls for a waiver of Trade and Intellectual Property Rules (TRIPS) for COVID-19 vaccines, which is backed by more than 100 mostly developing countries, being blocked again at World Trade Organisation talks by rich countries, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said:“This is a massive missed opportunity to speed up and scale up the production of lifesaving vaccines worldwide by waiving the intellectual property barriers that prevent more qualified manufacturers joining the effort.

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the extreme inequality in Southern African Development Community countries, and pushed millions into poverty. Recovering from the pandemic, however, offers SADC governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do reduce inequality drastically and eliminate extreme poverty by 2030. 

The international tax system is broken and unfair.  July’s Finance for Development Conference in Addis is the perfect time to ensure all parties agree to tackle this problem.

Following a vote in the European Parliament on the EU budget for 2019, Oxfam is concerned that the EU continues to prioritize migration management at the expense of humanitarian action and sustainable development.

Today the European Parliament adopted the report by its Panama Papers inquiry committee and voted in favor of recommendations aimed at stopping corporate tax avoidance across the European Union. Oxfam welcomes the Parliament's call for EU member states to adopt the reforms needed to end corporate tax abuses.