Following a recent EU Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) meeting held 19 June 2015, Vice President of the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis stated that ECOFIN expects the automatic exchange of tax rulings to be finalized this year.

The automatic exchange of tax rulings was proposed by the European Commission in March 2015 as part of a tax transparency package. Under that proposal, national tax authorities would be required to send a short report to all other Member States every three months on all advance cross-border tax rulings and advance transfer pricing arrangements that they have issued. Further work on transparency is also included as part of the recently issued Action Plan to reform corporate taxation in the EU ({News-2015-06-18/A/5- previous coverage}).