Swiss President Guy Parmelin and Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer meet OECD Secretary-General
Bern, 29.07.2021 - On 29 July President of the Swiss Confederation Guy Parmelin and Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer met Mr Mathias Cormann, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in Bern. Among the issues they discussed was the OECD’s new vision for the future, which Switzerland has actively helped to shape. In a bilateral discussion, Mr Maurer reiterated Switzerland's conditions regarding the future global minimum corporate tax.
OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, who took up his post on 1 June 2021, joined President of the Swiss Confederation Guy Parmelin and Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer on 29 July in Bern for a working meeting to discuss current OECD issues. The Swiss authorities took the opportunity to underline the good cooperation between Switzerland and the OECD and are looking forward to pursuing this cooperation with the new Secretary-General.
The discussions focused on the OECD’s vision for the future, an initiative launched by State Secretary Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch in November 2019 at a meeting of the Global Strategy Group she then chaired. In the new vision statement, member countries reiterate the importance attached to the OECD's founding principles of democracy based on the rule of law and human rights, and of open and transparent market economics. The vision statement will be adopted by ministers in October 2021 on the occasion of the OECD's 60th anniversary. Mr Parmelin also noted the quality and usefulness of the analyses and recommendations made in the latest OECD Economic Survey of Switzerland, which will be published at the end of the year.
For his part, Mr Maurer met with Mr Cormann to discuss current and future challenges of international tax policy. Mr Maurer took the opportunity to reiterate the conditions under which Switzerland supported the key parameters of the Inclusive Framework: Switzerland explicitly called for concrete measures to appropriately address the interests of small, innovative countries. In addition, the new rules should be applied uniformly by the member countries and a balanced solution should be found between tax rate and tax base in the case of minimum taxation.
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