From St Kitts & Nevis Observer

A main reason why the UK voted to leave the European Union was its forced subservience to EU laws and regulations that were destroying national sovereignty. Today that EU bully boy pressure is being exported clear across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

The so called EU Blacklist of non Tax compliant nations is hitting Grenada, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and St.Lucia for allegedly being tax havens for rich Europeans. True or not the EU is threatening economic pressure against nations that don’t submit to its rules…in other words, play ball by our rules or face economic hardships.

Grenada, for one, is asking the EU to remove it from it global tax haven blacklist.

A statement from the Ministry of Finance said the minister has requested that the Eastern Caribbean nation “be de-listed soonest considering that we adequately and formally indicated our commitment to comply with all the stipulations of the Code of Conduct Group going forward, and therefore should not have been included on the published blacklist”.

The reason put forward for Grenada being included in the list was that it has not signed and ratified the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance as amended, and did not clearly commit to addressing these issues by December 31, 2018.

However, the Finance Ministry said it is important to note that Grenada made high level commitments, complete with timelines, to the EU Code of Conduct group by way of letters on November 17 and 28, 2017, “to action concerns raised by the group regarding meeting all the criteria set up by the EU Council for Transparency and Fairness in Taxation”.

“And we are well on track to doing so,” it said.

“Grenada has enacted and signed into force both the primary and secondary legislation which are required for implementing the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance. In addition, Grenada has expended a significant amount of resources to put in place structures and processes to facilitate exchange of information on taxation with countries in the European Union.”

The Finance Ministry said Grenada had inadvertently not provided a timeline for signing the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance, given that no timeline was in the Code of Conduct Group request.

“It must be noted though, that Grenada fully stated its commitment to sign in aforementioned correspondences. Now that the blacklisting for that reason has been brought to our attention, the Minister of Finance has written to the code of conduct group, specifying our commitment to sign the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance by 31st December, 2018,” the statement added.

For more on this story go to: http://www.thestkittsnevisobserver.com/regional-international-news/caribbean-nations-caving-eu-economic-threats/