On 10 October 2019 Switzerland was de-listed from the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions (Annex II, "grey" list) and was found as fully compliant with EU tax good governance principles.
On 10 October 2019 the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) met in Luxembourg, to exchange views on issues mainly related to anti-money laundering and on the Wise Persons' Group's report on the European financial architecture of development.
During this meeting the Council also adopted a further update to the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions (Annex I: black list; Annex II: grey list) which was set up in December 2017 and was since then regularly reviewed and updated to take into account progress made in countries' commitments. This latest update is based on the respective recommendations from the EU Code of Conduct Group (Business Taxation) in its report dated 4 October 2019.
Switzerland is now finally removed from the grey list which includes jurisdictions that committed to amend or abolish their harmful tax regimes to make them compliant with EU standards within specific deadlines. Accordingly Switzerland is found to be compliant with all commitments on tax cooperation due to the positive outcome of the referendum in May 2019 and due to the fact that the necessary reforms have been adopted and gazetted.
Additional countries removed from the grey list are Albania, Costa Rica, Mauritius and Serbia.
Further, ECOFIN agreed to remove the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from the black list and to move Marshall Islands from the black list to grey list (Global Forum review still pending), considering that these two jurisdictions adopted necessary amendments to their substance requirements. That would leave nine jurisdictions on the list: American Samoa, Belize, Fiji, Guam, Oman, Samoa, Trinidad & Tobago, US Virgin Islands and Vanuato. Blacklisted states face stricter monitoring on transactions with the EU, additional tax measures and reputational damage.
To sum up
Switzerland's de-listing is now also a formal acknowledgment that Switzerland's tax reform introducing new, internationally complaint tax measures, is fully aligned with the current international standards.
