(..as FATCA critics respond with calls for immediate EU action)                                                                          

A new report by a European Parliamentary think tank that had been commissioned by the Parliament's Committee on Petitions (PETI) to "update" a previous report on the subject of "FATCA Legislation and its Application at the International and EU Level" is being welcomed by FATCA critics in Europe for its acknowledgement of certain  concerns about the way the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is implemented that the original report didn't fully identify.

This coming Tuesday, members of the Dutch House of Representatives will once again take up the issue of the American tax evasion prevention law known as FATCA, and the problems it is continuing to cause for thousands of Dutch citizens with mostly historic links to the U.S.

Dutch lawmakers said on Tuesday that they plan to join forces with their French counterparts in asking the EU Commission to once again raise with the U.S. the issue of the problems some of their citizens are having with their financial accounts, as a result of the U.S. tax evasion-prevention law known as FATCA.

A hard-line written response by Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra to the latest in a series of questions put to him and other Dutch officials over the past two years, about the banking problems so-called “accidental Americans” have been struggling with, has thrust the issue back into the media spotlight in the Netherlands, at least, since it was posted on the Dutch government's website on Oct. 6. 

A nine-page response by Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra to the latest batch of questions put to him by a Dutch parliamentarian sympathetic to the banking problems so-called “accidental Americans” have been struggling with has left many of  those accidentals stunned and frustrated, they say.

Some so-called accidental Americans, who are citizens and residents of the Netherlands and who have been struggling to maintain their bank accounts there owing to their lack of a U.S. “tax information number,” have run into a new problem, a Dutch news organization has reported: The recent closure of the American consulate there, in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Dutch finance minister Johannes "Hans" Vijlbrief has responded to more than 20 questions posed to him by three Dutch lawmakers last month, on behalf of so-called "accidental Americans" resident in the Netherlands who have been struggling to maintain their Dutch bank accounts, by insisting that it would be "premature for banks to close, block or freeze" the bank accounts of such dual Dutch/American clients now, just because these clients had failed to provide these Dutch banks with a U.S. "Taxpayer Identification Number (typically a Social Security number). 

Representatives from two American expat organizations that met yesterday with around half a dozen members of the Dutch House of Representatives in the Hague said they believed that their urgent call for government action to deal with the problems of thousands of  bank accounts belonging to "accidental Americans" being closed was at least acknowledged, and the groundwork laid for further discussions.