NASSAU, Bahamas — Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell last week urged the European Union to fix the unilateral blacklisting of Caribbean nations, calling for meetings to develop a universal standard, The Nassau Guardian reported on Monday, October 31, in an article written by Paige McCartney.
He was addressing the meeting of foreign ministers of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a delegation which included representatives from the European Union (EU).
The Bahamas has been placed on and off various non-compliant lists over the past decade. The most recent addition has been this month, when the EU Council added Anguilla, The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos to its list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.
The attorney general last week called the deficiencies identified during this jurisdiction’s last Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) peer review trivial and technical. The government has already passed legislation which it believes will remedy the matter.
“We are committed to trying to meet the standards, but we get the impression that every time you try to meet the standard the goalpost gets shifted down the road and there’s something else you have to do,” Mitchell said.
“Hear us loudly and clearly, this is a vexing problem that you have to fix because it is causing damage in our societies and it cannot be fixed unilaterally, it has to fixed by us meeting together to decide what the standards are going to be and not moving the goalposts every time you meet them.”
This is not the first time The Bahamas or a Caribbean leader has publicly called out the EU. In September, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley advocated on behalf of the Caribbean before the US House Committee on Financial Services. While addressing the 77th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, Prime Minister Philip Davis called the measures implemented by international actors on small island developing nations “inequitable and unjust”. See complete article in The Nassau Guardian at https://thenassauguardian.com/mitchell-urges-eu-representatives-to-fix-vexing-blacklistings/
CAPTION: Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell in concluding
