Furious French MPs have demanded that Bermuda should be put back on the country’s list of tax havens.

Anger over the decision to remove the Island and Jersey from the list of uncooperative jurisdictions united both the right and left wings in French politics.

President of the French parliament foreign affairs committee Elisabeth Guigou and Christian Eckert of the finance committee, both from the ruling socialist bloc in the National Assembly, issued a joint statement condemning the delisting.

The statement said: “in the view of the recent work by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s forum on transparency ... such a withdrawal is not justified.

“Neither Jersey or Bermuda has obtained an overall rating justifying withdrawal.”

They added that “the list of non-co-operative states established by decree automatically excludes any member country despite the reality of fiscal particularities in the EU”.

And right wing conservative politician Nicolas Dupont-Aignan said that he “wonders whether they’ve gone mad”.

He added: “It is surreal to consider Jersey as something other than a tax haven. It makes you wonder if it’s not the banks that govern.”

And Mr Dupont-Aignan pledged to make the issue of tax evasion a major issue in the May elections to the European Parliament.

The French Green Party also said that Bermuda and Jersey should be put back on the list — and questioned the influence of big business on French policy.

Green MP Eva Joly, in a letter to French finance minister Pierre Moscovici, asked for information on the links between the finance industry and the French Ministry of Finance.

She wrote: “How can we not link the financial sanctions against our industry and the withdrawal of Bermuda and Jersey from the blacklist?

“It is also in these moments that our government risks our credibility in its capacity not to bow to the pressure of big companies, the champions of tax evasion.”

And French anti-corruption think-tank Anticor said in a letter to Mr Moscovici and Budget Minister Bernard Cazeneuve: “In the period of economic and social tension that we are going through, French citizens are extremely sensitive to issues of tax justice.

“Any laxity on non-co-operative territories would be considered unacceptable, and even more if it is linked to the intervention of banks, that everyone knows are well established in these territories.”

But Mr Moscovici said: “The criteria of the French list are legal criteria based on fiscal cooperation with France — it would be illegal to keep on this list states that do not fulfil the criteria any more.”

Finance Minister Bob Richards announced last December that France had removed Bermuda from its blacklist. The French also delisted Jersey.

The two British territories, alongside the British Virgin Islands, were added to the French hit list in August last year.

The French move to add Bermuda to its hitlist came despite an existing Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) between Bermuda and France.

The decision meant that France could have imposed up to a 75 percent tax on French money transferred to Bermuda.

The European Union in 2012 recommended the creation of a list of jurisdictions that were “uncooperative” on tax matters.

The following year, the European parliament’s economic and monetary committee asked the European Commission to draw up a European-wide list of countries labelled as tax havens.

It is estimated that a trillion tax Euros a year is lost to European countries — most of which are still struggling from the effects of the global recession.