Ireland labelled a tax policy black hole

A senior Brussels official has accused several European countries including Ireland and the Netherlands of being tax policy “black holes” and has promised to pressure them to change their ways.

“Obviously many countries in the European Union are places where aggressive tax optimisation finds its place,” Pierre Moscovici, the European commissioner for economic affairs and taxation, told reporters in Brussels yesterday. “Some European countries are black holes. . . I want to address this.”

Mr Moscovici, who is a former French finance minister, was speaking before the scheduled meeting of EU finance ministers in which the bloc was expected to whittle down a month-old blacklist of non-EU tax havens from 17 countries to nine. When the list was announced in December, Oxfam said that four…