Anti-Money Laundering Newsletter – November 2021 | Risk jurisdictions in relation to AML/TF

New update of the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes

On October 5, 2021, the European Union, through the European Council, updated the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes. The list is updated twice a year, in February and October, and the latest update was on February 22, 2021.

• Black List (Annex I):

After this new update, the following jurisdictions have been removed from the Black List, and placed on the Grey List: Anguila, Dominica and Seychelles.

Nine jurisdictions remain on the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions (Annex I Black List): American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, US Virgin Islands and Vanuatu.

• Grey List (Annex II):

Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Malaysia, North Macedonia, Qatar and Uruguay have also been added to the Grey List (Annex II), while Australia, Eswatini and Maldives have implemented all the necessary tax reforms and have therefore been removed from it. Furthermore, Turkey continues to be mentioned  in Annex II. In its conclusions in February 2021, the Council called on Turkey to commit to automatic information exchange with all member states.  Even though progress has since been made, further steps need to be taken.

The EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes was set up in December 2017 and forms part of the EU’s external strategy for taxation. Its objective is to contribute to the current efforts to promote tax good governance throughout the world and it includes jurisdictions around the world that have not engaged in constructive dialog with the EU regarding tax governance or have not fulfilled their commitments to implement the necessary reforms to comply with a set of objective criteria to protect their tax revenues and fight against tax fraud, evasion and avoidance.