EU tax commissioner urges Austria to follow Luxembourg on bank transparency

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission welcomed what it called Luxembourg's openness to automatic exchange of information about bank accounts in the country, warning that Austria would find itself in an "unsustainable" position if it did not follow its example.

"I very much welcome Luxembourg's new openness to automatic exchange of information, even if it is long overdue," Algirdas Semeta, the European commissioner in charge of tax policy, said in a statement to Reuters.

"The spotlight is now on Austria. If it continues to resist this inevitable progress towards greater transparency, it will find itself in a lonely and quite unsustainable position."

(Reporting By John O'Donnell)