"Initially, the goal of this press conference was to keep you informed of the latest developments in our country, and specifically of the fact that the Luxembourg parliament decided yesterday to give up the bank secrecy laws, in order to be able to implement the automatic exchange of information starting from January 1st, 2015.
This is a major step for our country. As you know, the bank secrecy had been an important corner stone in the past of our traditions.
The second thing I wanted to underline – and I haven’t said this in French, so I say it in English – we signed in Berlin last week the early adopters’ convention, so that Luxembourg will be amongst the first movers to introduce the automatic exchange of information, not only related to interest rates, but to all kinds of revenue starting from January 1st, 2017.
But the news of today also brings me to speak about what we call anticipative decisions, or in other words ‘rulings’ in Luxembourg. And I mentioned that rulings have been considered by the European Commission as a procedure that is in conformity with EU-laws, as it has as a goal to give information to a company as to which laws are going to be applied to a specific case. So, in the sense that it gives certainty, predictability and security to the enterprise that is asking, it is considered a good practice.
May I also underline that very many countries in Europe have a rulings procedure. So, it is not a specificity of Luxembourg.
So, the key point here is to underline that the rulings in Luxembourg are compatible with the Luxembourg legislation, compatible with the EU-legislation, and compatible with the OECD-conventions, and any other international conventions.
The result of the application of today’s international, European and national law can sometimes lead to a result where companies are confronted with a very limited tax-rate, or even to a non-taxation. The Luxembourg government, together with most countries around the globe, consider that this is not a satisfactory solution. But this solution cannot be solved by one country alone, it needs to be solved by changes in national laws, all the national laws together, or in cooperation with international laws, be it at European level or at OECD-level.
This is the reason why our country has been actively participating to the works of the OECD, specifically the BEPS-procedure with its 15 working groups. And this is also the reason why Luxembourg has agreed to the directive, the parent-subsidiary directive of July of this year, where the imposition, the taxation of companies and subsidiaries is being regulated in such a way that we avoid non-double taxation.
In the same vein I can announce to you that tomorrow, in the Ecofin-meeting, I will be able to give the agreement of Luxembourg to the anti-abuse clauses that are going to be introduced in this directive. We think that this is also an important part in terms of credibility, and that is the reason why we are going to subscribe to that directive.
Let me also underline that we, as a government, have embarked on this path of transparency since the beginning of the year. This move towards transparency did already start in the months before, in 2013, and is considered an absolute priority for our country. If you want to develop an international financial centre, you need to be a transparent financial centre. That is the direction in which we are going. And we are not only doing this because we think it’s good for international relations. We think it is also good for the potential future development of our financial services.
Last but not least, I said that we are going to cooperate fully with the European Commission on all those issues, and in particular with the issue of the rulings."