Of the 108 states and territories that are currently committed to the AEOI standard, 19 are not yet part of Switzerland's AEOI network. With the corresponding expansion of the AEOI network, Switzerland is helping to create a level playing field worldwide.
Specifically, the Federal Council intends to exchange financial account information for the first time in 2021 with the following other partner countries: Albania, Azerbaijan, Brunei Darussalam, Dominica, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Macao, the Maldives, Nigeria, Niue, Pakistan, Peru, Samoa, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey and Vanuatu. In the period between the initiation of the consultation process and the publication of the dispatch, Oman has also declared that it will implement the AEIO by 2020. For this reason, the Federal Council has also included this state in the list of further partner states.
The corresponding federal decrees are to be submitted to Parliament for approval in the autumn and winter sessions this year, so that the AEIO could be activated with these partner states from 2020. Before an initial exchange of data with these partner states, the Federal Council will once again review whether they meet the requirements of the AEIO standard. It therefore intends to apply by analogy the review mechanism adopted by Parliament in December 2017 to all the new AEOI partner states mentioned above.
On 29 May 2019, the Federal Council also approved the report on the review mechanism for standard-compliant implementation of the AEIO by the partner states with which Switzerland intends to exchange data for the first time in autumn 2019. It has instructed the Federal Department of Finance (FDF) to submit the report to the parliamentary committees for consultation. The Federal Council will then decide whether any data at all should be exchanged with a partner state.
At the end of September 2018, Switzerland automatically exchanged financial account information with 36 states and territories for the first time and plans to exchange data with 37 further partner states at the end of September 2019.
