Serbia “removed from EU’s draft tax haven blacklist”

Serbia has for now avoided being included in EU’s blacklist of tax havens, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

The agency said last week that the November 21 draft mentioned Turkey and Serbia as some of the countries that could be added to the list.

But Serbia is now seen as “compliant with EU’s demands for additional commitments,” the report said, without providing any other information.

However, Turkey’s case is explained in detail, with Bloomberg saying that the country is ” on course to dodge a potential inclusion EU’s list of tax havens” after it offered “additional clarifications to the bloc in a letter sent on Friday.”

Ankara’s commitments are now addressing all the issues identified, said an EU working group document updated on Monday and seen by Bloomberg.

“On the basis of new information provided, experts have concluded that the preferential regime named ‘regional headquarters regime’ is not meeting the criterion for the inclusion in the list of harmful tax regimes,” the agency said, citing the document.

Last week, Bloomberg said that the draft envisaged including “as many as 36 countries” in the blacklist – Serbia, Armenia, Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Panama, and Tunisia among them