The new European Commission president, Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, took political responsibility for his country's tax practices on Wednesday, saying he would fight tax evasion with more automatic exchange of information between countries.
"I am not the architect of what you could call the Luxembourgish problem," Juncker, who was the tiny Grand Duchy's prime minister between 1995 and 2013, told a news conference. "There is nothing in my past indicating that my ambition was to organise tax evasion in Europe," he said.
Tax authorities are independent of the Luxembourg government he said. However, Juncker said: "I am politically responsible for what happened in each and every corner and quarter (of Luxembourg).
