The Rise of the EU in International Tax Policy

Historically, the OECD has been the dominant forum for international tax policy-making and cooperation. Since the global financial crisis, however, the European Union has become a key challenger to the OECD. This chapter explores the evolution of policy networks in and around EU tax policy. I discuss how tax networks have moved from an ‘embryonic’ expert setting to a highly heterogeneous, contested and unstable setting, with broad public and political involvement. In the context of the crisis, the salience of international tax policy has exploded, and the EU tax policy system has proved highly adaptive in adjusting to this unprecedented attention. This new EU setting has successfully produced radical policy agendas and outputs in direct competition with the OECD. The chapter examines these dynamics in the illustrative case of corporate tax transparency, a controversial and contested policy area where the EU and OECD agendas have critically diverged.