No more secrets

10 April 2013 By Viktoria Dendrinou

Vienna will finally negotiate with its EU peers on loosening its bank secrecy rules. Exchanging information with other governments will limit privacy and may require a constitutional change, but the Cypriot drama has tested governments’ tolerance for financial shenanigans.

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The European Commission warned Austria on April 8 that its banking secrecy regime would leave it in a “lonely and unsustainable position” if it did not follow the same rules as other countries in sharing information on foreign depositors.
Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said on April 9 that Austria will join Luxembourg for talks with the European Union on how to crack down on cross-border tax evasion.
Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter said on April 9 that Austria’s constitutional laws on privacy and data protection do not fit with an automatic exchange of depositor data.
“I am a hunter of tax cheats but also the protector of honest savers. It is unjustified to open all the savings accounts of those who have done nothing wrong. That is why I am fighting like a lion for banking secrecy”, she told Austrian paper Oesterreich on April 8.
Luxembourg Finance Minister Luc Frieden told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on April 7 that there was an international trend moving towards automatic information exchange, adding that, in contrast to the past “we no longer strictly reject this.”
Austria and Luxembourg are the only European Union member states that do not participate in the automatic exchange of cross-border account-holder data for EU residents.

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