France sought on Tuesday to keep alive a disputed financial transactions tax after 18 months of talks failed to produce a deal that would force banks blamed for causing the financial crisis to help pay for the clean-up, reports Reuters.
Having missed a self-imposed year-end deadline to agree the broad outlines of the tax among the 11 euro zone countries that back the plan, French finance minister Michel Sapin told other finance ministers a deal was still possible early next year.
"We are not giving up," Sapin told a news conference. Asked if January 2016 was still a realistic start date for the tax he said: "It's not a fantasy or a funeral. That is our objective."
The tax, first proposed in the 1970s to penalise short-term currency speculators, was seized on by France and Germany in 2012 as a political symbol to correct the excesses of the financial sector blamed for the worst crisis in a generation.
But the original plan for a euro zone-wide FTT became mired in disputes over how to levy the tax and whether to include derivatives, with its 2014 start date slipping to January 2016.
Finance ministers from Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain were originally due to sign off on the broad outlines of a deal by a meeting on Tuesday to make possible a 2016 start date.
Despite Sapin's comments, other ministers say that is also now in doubt, Austria's finance minister Hans Joerg Schelling said. "It is possible but difficult," he told reporters as he arrived at the meeting.
Often described as a 'Robin Hood' tax after the medieval outlaw who robbed the rich to give to the poor, the FTT has wide support in France, where a group of NGOs including Oxfam called on President François Hollande on Tuesday to lead on the issue.
Britain, home to Europe's largest financial sector, has long opposed the tax, fearing it will drive business away from the City of London, while many in the financial industry hope the FTT dies a quiet death.