BERLIN — European Union officials on Wednesday proposed new rules to try to discourage tax-avoidance deals with multinational corporations, which critics say give some countries unfair business advantages.

Some of the bloc’s smaller countries, like Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, have offered the deals to attract the likes of Apple, Starbucks and Amazon. The companies, in turn, have saved huge sums on their corporate tax bills. But European Union authorities have been trying to curb that practice.

The legislation, proposed on Wednesday in Brussels by the European Union’s policy-making arm, the European Commission, aims to dissuade governments from giving special tax breaks by forcing them to publicly disclose more tax information. If approved by member governments this year, the rules would oblige each of the bloc’s 28 national tax authorities to share basic information on tax rulings each quarter, beginning in 2016.

Governments now share very little information, and member nations are loath to cede any of their sovereignty in that sphere. Those sensitivities limited the scope for more far-reaching proposals by the European Commission.