Offshore Financial Centres

This chapter assesses the role of the EU in the regulation of tax evasion and tax avoidance. This role has historically been constrained by institutional limits on EU policy in the area of direct taxation and a severe collective action problem extenuated by an EU membership which includes a number of ‘tax havens’. The chapter argues in consequence that policy success relies on an admixture of unilateral innovation and mutually reinforcing policy instruments. In the context of the global financial crisis and acute concerns regarding fiscal capacity US intervention has had a catalytic effect. EU policy has subsequently entered into a period of accelerated development. Many obstacles that previously seemed intractable are being transcended and complementarities between EU and US policy are emerging to form a nascent, inchoate and still incomplete multilateralism. The chapter develops this analysis of creeping policy competence in the EU and an emergent regulatory assemblage.