President of Panama meets with French counterpart in search of getting off the list of tax havens

PANAMA CITY – The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, met on Monday with the French president Emmanuel Macron, during an official visit to Paris, in which he sought support to remove the Central American country from the list of tax havens of the European Union.

Since coming to power on July 1, the Panamanian president has harshly questioned the so-called gray lists and has warned that countries that keep Panama on said lists will not be able to do business or participate in public works tenders in the country.

The meeting between both leaders “generated very positive results for Panama in its fight to stop being discriminated against by tax lists,” said a statement from the Presidency of that country, while adding that “France wants Panama to be withdrawn from this list”.

Macron accepted the invitation to visit the Central American country in the second half of 2025, which would mark “the historical relationship between both countries,” the document stated.

The meeting between Mulino and Macron takes place more than a week after the European bloc agreed to maintain Panama and a dozen other jurisdictions — Anguilla, Fiji, Guam, Palau, United States Virgin Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu—on the list of tax havens because they are considered non-cooperative in the delivery of tax information.

The EU considers that Panama has not done enough to comply with the exchange of tax information upon request and that the country has a “harmful” regime for exempting income from foreign sources that it has not resolved, in reference to Panama’s territorial tax system. under which only income generated or produced within its jurisdiction is subject to tax.

Mulino and previous Panamanian leaders have sought to be removed from that list because they consider that they damage the image of a country with an economy based mainly on services.

Panama has also previously been on lists of countries that allegedly do not do enough to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing in their financial system. In October 2023, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) removed Panama from that gray list, after six years of being on it.

Mulino has stressed that Panama is a peaceful and collaborative country and rejects what he considers “pejorative” lists that, according to him, affect the name of the country internationally.