EU member states are losing more than US$17bn in corporate tax a year as a result of U.S. companies "abusing the law to shift their profits into the UK, Switzerland and Luxembourg", where corporate tax rates are lower, the Tax Justice Network has said.

Europe's estimated 300,000 so-called 'accidental Americans' were dealt a fresh blow yesterday, in the form of a statement by a top EU official who said the European Commission had found "no evidence of the existence of an infringement" on the rights of such 'accidentals', as EU citizens, to have "a basic bank account".

The European Union is "preparing to re-tune" some of its MiFID II market rules from 2020, less than three years after they were first implemented, in response to criticism from investors and regulators of the controversial legislation, the Financial Times has reported.

A number of European citizens who have been struggling for years with legacy American citizenship issues, as a result of the 2010 U.S. law known as FATCA, expressed their frustration with Europe's executive level of government – among others – during a two-and-a-half-hour European Parliament hearing on FATCA in Brussels yesterday. 

European Parliamentarian Sophie in 't Veld has called on French politician Pierre Moscovici to ensure that the European Commission for Economic and Financial Affairs – which he heads up – “starts taking [the problems that Accidental Americans are facing in Europe because of FATCA] seriously,” and “stops hiding behind excuses."

The European Commission on Wednesday published an updated version of what it called "third countries with weak anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing regimes," which included a number of U.S. territories, including American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The European Commission has unveiled a program it says will be aimed at collecting data on the investment-based citizenship and residence programs of EU member states, and using this data to ensure that these programs don't facilitate money laundering, tax evasion and other undesireable practices.

The eight-year-long effort by organizations representing American expats around the world to convince the U.S. government to abolish FATCA appears likely to soon find itself in the middle of another battlefield.

European lawmakers last week gave a potentially significant boost to a growing band of Europe-based “accidental Americans,” who have been campaigning to engage European government officials to back their request to be allowed to cast off their American citizenship (and thus their taxation by the U.S.) more easily and cheaply than is currently possible under U.S. law.