Agreement on plans for a financial transactions tax (FTT) is due to be reached at the upcoming meeting of EU finance ministers on 12 February.

Both the European Commission and European parliament have now given a resounding go-ahead to the 11 EU countries planning to introduce an FTT within the framework of enhanced cooperation, which requires a minimum of nine member states to back a proposal.

The eleven EU member states - Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia - requested the use of enhanced cooperation to press forward with the FTT in October 2012. Together they account for 90% of eurozone GDP. MEPs have long advocated an FTT to make financial market players take more responsibility for resolving the crisis in the EU.

Lithuania's new Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius also announced that the country would sign up the EU FTT early in 2013, although he later backtracked saying that the government needed more time to study the possible effects of the tax, particularly in relation to Lithuania-based branches of foreign banks. Other member states may be persuaded to follow suit, however.

A tax imposed on financial transactions is designed not only to ensure that the banking sector contributes to the costs of overcoming the debt crisis, but also to curb high-risk high frequency trading, seen by some as the main reason for turbulence on the stock markets.

A consensus among all 27 EU countries could not be reached, however, given unwavering and staunch opposition from both the UK, fearing major location disadvantages for its London financial centre, and from Sweden.

The rate or scope of the tax has not yet been determined, although the European Commission has previously proposed a 0.1% tax on share and bond transactions, and a 0.01% tax on derivatives.