Barbados is breathing a sigh of relief after the island nation was removed from the European Union’s (EU) non-cooperative tax jurisdictions list.
The news comes as the EU Council, as part of its periodical review, shared an updated list on Monday (February 22).
Barbados was named on the EU list in October 2020 after it received a ‘partially compliant’ rating from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Global Forum for Transparency and Exchange of Information.
“It has now been granted a supplementary review by the Global Forum and has therefore been moved to a state-of-play document pending the outcome of this review,” the Council of the EU said in a statement, as it sought to explain Barbados’ removal from the list.
DOMINICA BLACKLISTED
However, Dominica has now been blacklisted.
The EU council said Dominica has been included in the list as it received a ‘partially compliant’ rating from the Global Forum and has not yet resolved this issue.
Other Caribbean countries on the list are Trinidad and Tobago and Anguilla.
The approval of the updated blacklist was initially planned for the Ecofin Council of EU27 economy and finance ministers on Tuesday, however, the list was excluded from the agenda at the last minute.
The updated list will instead be included as a part of the non-discussion topics in the EU ambassadors’ meeting (COREPER) on Wednesday and formally adopted by the Foreign Affairs Council.
The EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions is a tool members of the political bloc use to identify and list tax havens.
First adopted in 2017, it is used by the member states to tackle external risks of tax abuse and unfair tax competition
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