Preserving Ambition - Ensuring Legal Certainty

August 4 | Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Office 

Together with NUTJ, PSI and ITUC, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Office convened the third in a series of roundtable discussions on the negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation.

The labour movement has closely followed the negotiations on the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation since their inception. Through previous roundtables organised by FES, NUTJ, PSI and ITUC, delegates have engaged with labour representatives on the importance of building an inclusive and effective international tax architecture. The first dialogue explored why international tax cooperation matters for workers, while the second focused on the shortcomings of current transfer pricing rules and their implications for labour.

The discussion focused on one of the key legal and political questions surrounding the emerging framework: how the future Convention and its Protocols should interact with the more than 3,000 bilateral tax treaties already in force worldwide. Participants explored how to ensure that the new multilateral framework can deliver meaningful reform while preserving legal certainty, treaty stability and confidence in existing international commitments.

Held under the Chatham House Rule, the roundtable brought together UN delegates, international tax experts, trade union representatives and civil society. It provided an informal space to examine potential conflicts between treaty instruments, discuss possible legal approaches and identify areas of convergence ahead of formal negotiations on the issue.