Finance ministers of the 11 countries participating in the FTT enhanced cooperation met on 27 January to discuss the new action plan proposed earlier last month by France and Austria. The action plan´s main idea was to adopt a low-rate tax with the widest possible application. The 11 finance ministers agreed on this. They also agreed to set 1 January 2016 as the target date to launch the FTT. The outgoing Greek finance minister abstained from the agreement, due to the elections in Greece.

The FTT has been in negotiations since 2011, with a clear idea but without much political will to conclude them. The original proposal was for a EU-wide FTT with a rate of 0.1% on shares and 0.01% on derivatives, covering transactions with all assets whose issuer is based inside the EU. After some countries refused the idea of the FTT, the negotiations continued in the enhanced cooperation regime, with 11 countries. They did not, however, lead to any results, despite some efforts. In December, another impetus failed to deliver results. In January 2015, therefore, Austria and France came up with a new base for the negotiations.

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