ETAF calls for stronger protection of professional secrecy for tax advisers in EU law

The European Tax Adviser Federation (ETAF) released on 23 October 2025 a new position paper highlighting the essential role of professional secrecy for tax advisers across Europe and the urgent need to safeguard it in EU legislation.

Professional secrecy is a cornerstone of the trust between clients and their advisers, ensuring that citizens and businesses can seek expert tax guidance in full confidence that sensitive information remains protected.

However, recent legislative and regulatory developments — including new EU reporting obligations, ECJ rulings and divergent national interpretations — increasingly threaten this fundamental principle. ETAF warns that without coherent EU-wide protection, professional secrecy risks being undermined, weakening both taxpayers’ rights and the integrity of European tax systems. It could also create distortions of competition between professions performing comparable functions, posing a real threat to the future of the tax advisory profession in some EU countries.

To address this, ETAF urges EU institutions and Member States to take decisive actions:

• Explicitly enshrine professional privilege for tax advisers in EU law, with a clear and consistent definition recognising their equal standing with lawyers and accurate translations across all EU languages.
• Promote harmonised application of professional secrecy rules across all Member States, including through European Commission’s interpretative guidance.
• Ensure proportionality and safeguards in new EU reporting obligations, limiting to the maximum and legally justifying any exception to professional secrecy.
• Acknowledge the key compliance role of regulated tax advisers in supporting tax compliance and ensuring effective tax administration across the EU.

Professional secrecy is neither a privilege nor a favour, but an obligation. It is an essential element of any rule-of-law system and represents one of the core values of the exercise of the profession.

ETAF and its member organisations remain committed to working closely with European institutions to secure a legislative environment that respects professional secrecy, ensures legal certainty and guarantees equal protection for all EU citizens and businesses.