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Austria aims to agree within weeks to give other European Union countries access to foreigners' bank account details, Chancellor Werner Faymann said on Saturday, allowing the bloc to begin talks over bank secrecy with non-EU states such as Switzerland. Faymann said he hoped for a deal before a May 22 EU summit that will discuss ways to curb tax dodging that costs members about 1 trillion euros ($1.30 trillion) a year in lost income. EU leaders have pushed Austria for a deal before the meeting.
"We want to achieve a result for an exchange of data in the interest of fighting fraud in Europe," Faymann said in an interview aired by broadcaster ORF, playing down the potential impact of data swaps on Austria's banking sector. "The biggest economic damage would be if we got the reputation of protecting frauds. Austrians don't find this necessary and I have spoken with bank managers who also don't find it necessary," he said.
Austria, the last EU holdout on bank secrecy, said on Friday it was ready for talks as long as banking secrecy for Austrians is preserved, and detailed its three main concerns. Vienna had been isolated on this after Luxembourg changed tack this month.
Austrian banks at times use banking secrecy as a marketing tool, but foreign deposits do not play as much of a role as they do in major offshore centres such as Cyrpus and Luxembourg. EU citizens have about 35 billion euros ($46 billion) in Austrian deposits, a tenth of the total, while foreigners have 53 billion euros in banks in Austria, the central bank says. Austria now has banks withhold tax on EU citizens' interest income and returns the money anonymously to home countries.

Copyright Reuters, 2013

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