Ceding to pressure from the French Government and its domination of the OECD forum, perhaps better its  French version,  Jersey introduced the Taxation (Exchange of Information with Third Countries) (Amendment No. 7) (Jersey) Regulations 2013 which came into force on 6 November 2013.

The regulations were brought into force after only having been circulated in draft 2 weeks prior to that. The substantive and material amendments to the Regulations are as follows:

-   the scope for challenging the notices is narrowed to a Judicial Review test (i.e. establishing that the Comptroller was acting illegally, irrationally, unreasonably or his decision making was procedurally improper)

-   the Comptroller is no longer required to provide the taxpayer (or therefore any third party served with a notice) with his "reasons" for issuing the notice;

-   recipients of notices only have 15 days to provide the information requested (rather than 30 days);

-   challenges to notices must be made within 14 days of receipt of the notice (rather than 21 days):

-   even where parties are challenging the notices, they are still required to provide the information requested;

-   there is no right of appeal to Jersey's Court of Appeal: if an application for judicial review is unsuccessful, an appeal can only be made to the Privy Council, provided that leave to appeal is granted.

Trust companies and other professionals should seek guidance immediately on receipt of a notice relating  to French issues, as Overseas Chambers is able to confirm exactly what information and in what wording that information and accounts should be shared with the French administration through the Regulations and the Comptroller.

Perhaps had such a French orientated perspective been taken alongside an Island orientation, certain of the issues causing the hold up of information and the subsequent blacklisting might have been avoided.

This adjustment was in order to show good faith in the current negotiations with France over the impending blacklisting, in order to deflect any other such attempts by other OECD States.

As indicated in prior postings on this page, the French ministers did not have the statutory power to impose a blacklisting upon a European Territory or dependency of a Member State, whose Treaty status is that of a territory within the European Communities, not outside it. The French article 238 1 A 1 CGI in fact expressly limits their competence to blacklist to non European territories outside the EC. That principle has just been confirmed by the French Constitutional court in terms in the past week in a separate matter relating to the constitutionality of the Anti-Evasion law of 2014. Jersey's status as within the EC was not respected.  For those younger readers, the 1972 act of accession was negotiated with the EC on the basis that the Crown Dependencies'  Constitutional relationships with the UK were to be transposed with minor modifications onto Jersey's integration into the European Communities.  That was confirmed by Commissioner Prodi in 2003, along with the Commissioner's effective certification that Jersey was in fact within the European Union.

Readers will note that whilst that is effectively the position taken by the Island's authorities; it is all too easy to fall into the trap of stating in shorthand that Jersey is outside the EC for some issues but  within it for others. That is not the position at all.