The Netherlands is making a major effort to ensure it makes European tax agreements which are transparent, junior finance minister Erik Wiebes said on Thursday.

At the same time, the Netherlands is keen to ensure companies want to locate in both Europe and the Netherlands, Wiebes told the Financieele Dagblad.

He dismissed claims made in Thursday’s FD which said the Netherlands has played a ‘notorious’ role in efforts to boost tax transparency.

The Netherlands has for years waged a campaign to keep the tax advantages it offers multinationals despite EU efforts to phase them out, the paper said. It based the claim on an analysis of the minutes of the Code of Conduct Group, set up in 1998 to make sure EU countries did not use damaging tax rulings to compete to attract multinationals

‘It reads like a history book. It is all old news,’ Wiebes said, adding that political thinking about the tax climate has changed. ‘We oppose constructions which allow companies to avoid paying tax,’ he said.

Wiebes said he and finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem were working to ensure as broad support as possible for new European Commission proposals on tax transparency.