BERLIN, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has handed over the final draft of a law that envisages introducing a new financial transaction tax (FTT) to nine European Union member countries, the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on Tuesday.
The draft seeks to levy a tax of 0.2 percent of the transaction value on trades in shares of large registered European companies valued at over one billion euros (1.11 billion U.S. dollars).
Scholz reportedly prepared the draft at the request of ministers from France, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Spain, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia, with whom he has been negotiating the introduction of this new levy.
The tax would apply to purchases of shares in over 500 companies in the ten countries. In Germany, 145 companies would be affected.
"For the first time since 2011, we are now ready to reach an agreement," Scholz wrote to his colleagues on Monday, asking them for their "final approval", according to the newspaper.
In 2011, European governments decided that taxpayers should not have to continue being burdened with the rescue of European banks after the great financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. In Germany alone, around 70 billion euros in taxpayer money were spent on bank rescues.
Germany has been trying to levy a larger, so-called financial transaction tax on high-risk financial products such as derivatives, but European countries have not been able to agree on a draft to date.
However, the preliminary tax on stock purchases proposed by Scholz is "only a first step in the direction" of the financial transaction tax, the newspaper noted.
The tax proposed by Scholz was criticized for not including high-risk financial products "that could potentially endanger the financial system," said Marc Tuengler, managing director of the German Association for Protection of Security Holdings (DSW) in November.
The planned tax would affect "precisely the securities with which around 10 million German citizens directly or indirectly provide for their old age," stressed Tuengler.
The draft law could be signed at the next meeting of European finance ministers and would apply from 2021, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
