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Port of Spain, Feb­ru­ary 18, 2026: For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the work that led to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions list was com­plet­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore the 28 April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

In a de­tailed state­ment, Im­bert out­lined the steps tak­en to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, not­ing that shift­ing glob­al rules re­quired con­tin­u­ous strength­en­ing and ad­just­ment of lo­cal laws. “The Gov­ern­ment had to sat­is­fy the Eu­ro­pean Union’s five delist­ing cri­te­ria, each of which re­quired rig­or­ous as­sess­ment and ev­i­dence, not talk,” he said, adding that sev­er­al key pieces of leg­is­la­tion, reg­u­la­tions, guid­ance notes, and ad­min­is­tra­tive mea­sures were passed and im­ple­ment­ed to demon­strate com­pli­ance.

He high­light­ed that the EU’s cri­te­ria eval­u­ate not on­ly the ex­is­tence of laws on pa­per, but their ef­fec­tive­ness in prac­tice, of­ten re­quir­ing two to three years of im­ple­men­ta­tion, au­dits, en­force­ment ac­tiv­i­ty, and mea­sur­able out­comes. Im­bert said the PNM’s progress was slowed by op­po­si­tion re­sis­tance, in­clud­ing at­tempts to de­lay leg­is­la­tion through a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee process.