Members of the European Union such as the UK and Luxembourg that are renowned for 'sweetheart deals' with large corporations organised by their tax authorities and courts have been left off a list of tax havens that contains only non-EU jurisdictions.

The EU has just publicised a list of 30 jurisdictions it accuses of being the world's worst-offending tax havens. On it are the following: Andorra, Liechtenstein, Guernsey, Monaco, Mauritius, Liberia, the Seychelles, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Maldives, the Cook Islands, Nauru, Niue, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Grenada, Montserrat, Panama, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, Turks and Caicos, and the US Virgin Islands.

As many of these jurisdictions have made major concessions to compliance with the wishes of great powers such as Germany, the leader in EU policy-making, they are thought to have been included to afford 'cover' in some way to tax havens that have EU membership. The Isle of Man, Jersey and Switzerland, however, have been left off. Andorra, which washes money for the governments of France and Spain when they indulge in illicit activities, has been included.

The EU's motivations for the issuance of such a list can certainly be guessed at. Firstly, it is an 'outward-looking' list and therefore will be seen as protectionism by any other name. Secondly, the EU is likely to make de-listing for each country dependent on the appearence in each target country of a beneficial ownership register, the need for which has been incorporated as a requirement in its fourth money-laundering directive, which will come into force on 26 June and must be enshrined in the laws its subject countries by 26 June 2017. The UK has already enacted a law to force companies to create registries of ‘persons with significant control’ which comes into force in April 2016.

The list certainly appears devoid of any kind of high moral principle. The chief minister of Guernsey has commented: "We lead a number of EU member-states on tax transparency and cooperation, and we will be partners of the EU in the automatic exchange of information under the Common Reporting Standard. This means we are well ahead of the full EU 28 – and yet we have been erroneously placed on an arbitrarily defined blacklist.”