France has offered to delay an EU-wide tax on tech giants in a bid to salvage the levy, which faces fierce opposition from Ireland and the Nordic countries, in an embarrassing setback for Emmanuel Macron in Brussels.

The Europhile French president had urged EU nations to agree plans for a 3 per cent tax on the revenues rather than the profits of about 180 tech companies such as Google and Facebook. Britain has said it will go it alone with its own digital tax of 2 per cent.

Paris claims the tax would be a vote-winner in next years European Parliament elections, which have been framed as a battleground between pro-EU and Eurosceptic parties.

EU tax law requires the unanimous support of all 28 member states. As well as Ireland and the Nordic countries, Germany, which fears a tax on revenues could harm its exports, expressed reservations over the levy.

With the traditional French-German engine of EU law-making sputtering, Bruno Le Maire told a Brussels meeting of his fellow finance ministers that Paris now agreed with Berlin that the tax could be delayed until summer 2020 to give time for global guidelines to be finalised.

On Monday, Le Maire's German counterpart Olaf Scholz backed a European tax, but only if international moves in the the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had failed by 2020.