TIRANA, Sept. 2- Albania and some Western Balkan countries were included in the gray list along with 36 other countries for the risk of tax fraud and evasion.
The European Commission is working to improve good tax governance globally in order to maximize fair taxation efforts. To this aim, the Council decided to publish in December 2017 a list of states that were not cooperative in this initiative. The list updates from time to time and according to the latest data in June this year, 36 countries including Albania are on the gray list.
The blacklist which consists of 11 countries, contains countries that are not cooperative and do not apply fair taxation rules, while the gray list includes countries that have problems with fair taxation, have agreed to cooperate but have failed. If Albania fails to consider the recommendations, it risks being blacklisted in the following year.
The EC announced that Member States have agreed to a number of measures against listed countries, which include in-depth monitoring and controls. The Commission will also continue to support the work of Member States to develop a more coordinated approach to sanctions for the 2019 list, which includes Albania. One of the measures is to ban funding from EU agencies in these countries.
The commission says it will continue to monitor Albania closely, as well as other countries on the gray list. Fair Tax Competition means that countries should not have harmful tax regimes, which go against the principles of the EU Code of Conduct or the OECD Forum on Bad Tax Practices.
