Germany’s finance minister Olaf Scholz has proposed a global minimum corporate tax for multinationals as Europe takes aim at digital giants including Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

Mr Scholz said the internet economy “was exacerbating” the problem of companies piling their profits into tax havens, which he plans to tackle through joint measures with France to force companies to pay domestic taxes in proportion to their profits.

“We need a worldwide minimum tax level that no state may go below," Mr Scholz, a social democrat in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government, told the "Welt am Sonntag" weekly.

"We require coordinated mechanisms which prevent the displacement of revenues to tax havens," said Scholz.

The European Commission has repeatedly called for large technology companies to pay a 3pc tax if they make money from user data or digital advertising in a country, regardless of their bricks-and-mortar presence. If the motion passes, the levy could generate around €5bn.

Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber, Airbnb and other large technology firms – typically from the US – are among the most high-profile firms that face the tax.

French economic minister Bruno Le Maire will issue a call to arms to European governments in Strasbourg on Tuesday, asking them to decide on a new tax regime to force technology behemoths to pay the same taxes as European companies before the end of this year.