Big EU’s Strange Obsession With Tiny Vanuatu
14th May 2026
Remote, resource-poor, and sparsely populated, the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu is not known for many achievements, if you’ve heard its name at all. It does, however, hold the distinction of being the most at-risk country for natural disasters, ranking consistently first on the World Risk Index due to its frequent exposure to cyclones and earthquakes—sometimes within days.
In addition to its exceptional bad luck with the gods of nature, Vanuatu has for almost a decade been subjected to a peculiar curse from the would-be arbiters of global governance. It is one of a handful of jurisdictions to have appeared on both EU financial and tax blacklists and, by far, the one that has remained there the longest.
Little known outside corporate compliance circles, the EU maintains two distinct blacklists: one targeting “high-risk” jurisdictions for money laundering and terrorist financing, created in 2016 by the European Commission; and another for “non-cooperation for tax purposes,” maintained since 2017 by the European Council. The former was ostensibly modeled after the ‘grey list’ of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)—an independent, intergovernmental watchdog established in 1989 by the G7 to set global standards for combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing. The latter draws heavily on OECD transparency and tax governance standards.