European Commission President José anuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy issued a joint letter to Member States calling for the G20's work on tax avoidance and evasion to be pushed forward. The joint letter sets out a number of agenda items for the next G20 meeting scheduled for 5^th and 6^th September, including tax avoidance and evasion, noting that such a topic is high on the global agenda.

The OECD's action plan on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) (see above) was endorsed in the letter by noting that the plan “is the right approach to curbing corporate tax avoidance worldwide....The BEPS Action Plan complements the measures put forward by the European Commission to tackle aggressive tax planning in the EU . We in particularly welcome the commitment to examine ways to overcome the tax challenges of the digital economy. The letter expressed a wish for consistency and co-ordination between EU and OECD efforts and the development of internationally agreed standards for the prevention of BEPS.

Full support was also noted for the OECD's work on developing a multilateral standard of automatic exchange of information.