Austria's Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling has stated that essential progress has been made by a group of EU nations working on developing the basis for a financial-transactions tax. The 11 countries – Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia – have chosen to continue discussions after EU-wide talks on the tax collapsed. They met in Luxembourg on Saturday, 12 September. Schelling, who heads the group, told the press: “We managed to agree on some of the core principles today” – signalling that a deadlock in talks had been overcome.

French Finance Minister, Michel Sapin, said that the group had made important advances during its meeting, with agreement on the taxation of gross trades rather than net transactions.

Key aspects of the tax remain to be agreed, including how much revenue the tax should raise. Another point of discussion at Saturday's meeting was how smaller countries should be compensated, seeing as they would need to invest more in collecting the tax than they would be able to gain in revenue. Proposals made by Italy outline how revenue could be reallocated from the country where the transaction is executed to the country where the trading company is based.

However, the group also agreed that tax rules should not allow companies to avoid paying the taxes by relocating.

Sapin also stated that France supports the plan to spend proceeds from the tax on aid for developing countries facing disruption caused by climate change.