BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's leaders took a major step in tackling tax-dodgers Wednesday by pushing to end bank secrecy across the bloc's 27 members by the end of the year.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the agreement to set up an automatic exchange of bank information among the EU's tax authorities — which has been long resisted by Austria and Luxembourg — as a "breakthrough".

European officials say tax fraud and evasion costs the 27-nation bloc's governments an estimated 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) a year at a time when much of the region is in recession and governments are forced to tighten their budgets.

One tactic used by individuals to get out of paying tax on income and investments is to hide money in another country's bank. By sharing information on account-holders' interest and other capital gains, the banks' data will help authorities track down tax cheats.

Luxembourg and Austria, the two EU countries that prize themselves on their banking secrecy, have long opposed the initiative, blocking it at previous meetings. But the two governments gave in Wednesday after making sure the system's introduction would be delayed until the end of the year to grant more time for negotiations on abandoning bank secrecy with non-EU countries such as Switzerland, Monaco and Liechtenstein.

The leaders didn't give an exact starting time for the automatic information exchange, but cheered the political agreement.

"Those who thought they could escape taxes by picking tax havens, they have to realize today that the days of impunity are over," said French President Francois Hollande.

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who chairs the leaders' meetings, voiced confidence that a united EU — the world's largest economy — has the clout to push for better tax practices around the world.

"Tax evasion is something no country can solve on its own," said Van Rompuy.

"There is a momentum not comparable with other moments in the past because we are in an economic crisis, an unprecedented European crisis."

The leaders also discussed how to curb large companies' aggressive tax planning, which allows them to take advantage of loopholes to redistribute their profits globally and minimize their payments.

In the meeting's concluding statement, the EU called for rapid progress on the measures against "aggressive tax planning and profit shifting" and vowed to push ahead with closing legal loopholes.

The investigation of the tax tactics of multinationals is being carried out on a global scale. On Tuesday, members of a U.S. Senate subcommittee grilled Apple CEO Tim Cook over allegations that the company's Irish subsidiaries help it avoid billions in U.S. taxes.

Cook insisted that the company's overseas operations have nothing to do with reducing Apple's U.S. taxes.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Wednesday denied Ireland was cutting special deals with multinationals. "Ireland has been one of the frontrunners, and will be, in regard to building a new international consensus," he said.

The issue of tax overshadowed the EU summit's supposed main topic, guaranteeing a steady supply of energy while combatting high power prices.

EU authorities are worried that Europe's industry is losing its competitiveness because energy prices there are significantly higher compared with other advanced economies such as the U.S..

"Soon Europe could be the only continent to still depend on imported energy," van Rompuy warned. "Households feel the weight of high prices and the industry finds it hard to compete with foreign firms who pay half the price for electricity, like in the United States," he added.

The leaders' discussion on energy, however, was more about stock-taking; no major decisions on new measures were taken, not least because energy policies are still mainly a domain of the national governments.

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Juergen Baetz can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz

Raf Casert can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/rcasert

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By Karen Jacobs

(Reuters) - U.S. carrier Delta Air Lines will watch the wave of orders for the latest Airbus and Boeing planes roll on by and wait for the jets to prove themselves before ordering any, its chief executive told Reuters on Wednesday.

The two airplane makers have orders for more than 3,000 of their narrow-bodied models, the Boeing 737 MAX and the Airbus A320neo, which boast fuel savings of about 15 percent. The new models are to be in service from the second half of the decade.

"We'd rather get toward the end of a production line because one, the airplane has probably been stretched, and stretched economics are always better than the original economics," the airline's Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson told Reuters reporters and editors at Reuters New York headquarters.

Jumping in at the back of the line for a new model allows time for technical difficulties to be resolved, he said.

"Our ideal solution for buying airplanes is to compete Boeing against Airbus against used airplanes; compete GE against Pratt and Rolls-Royce so that we always have multiple engine manufacturers and multiple airframe manufacturers at the table," Anderson said. (For a look at Delta's business performance, click http://link.reuters.com/tar38t)

In 2011, Delta ordered 100 Boeing 737-900ER models due to be delivered starting later this year, but it has not bought either the Boeing 737 MAX or the Airbus A320neo.

Rival U.S. airlines such as United Continental Holdings and AMR Corp's American Airlines, which plans to merge with US Airways Group this year and form the world's biggest carrier, have already placed orders for the re-engineered jets that are due for delivery over the next few years.

Anderson said Delta's deal with Boeing allowed it to convert the last 40 of the 737-900ER aircraft it has on order to the newer MAX model.

"We will evaluate it, but we would rather see some other people fly that engine around for a while," Anderson said. CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric and France's Safran , makes engines for the 737 MAX.

As planemakers try to get airlines to buy their newest designs, prices on existing models become heavily discounted. Established models also tend to be more reliable as early technical problems are ironed out.

'PROVEN PRODUCTS'

"We would rather see proven products that have cash-on-cash returns from the moment we take delivery," Anderson said. "That is much more important."

While manufacturers are playing up double-digit percentage reductions in fuel costs in their newest models, which are equipped with more fuel-efficient engines, Delta prefers to buy aircraft toward the end of their production cycle when prices are lower.

"The airplane salesmen always show you charts that have these big operating savings," Anderson said. "But the charts never have the capital cost, so it is a little bit of a fallacy to analyze airplanes without the capital costs included."

Airbus recently began talking up the lower ownership cost of its A330 wide-body jet as it defends the model against a proposed new stretched version of Boeing's Dreamliner called the 787-10X. Airbus told a U.S. industry conference in March that the A330, whose sales have held up better than expected due in part to 787 delivery delays, could compete with the 787, implying price discounts to outweigh higher fuel consumption.

"We operate 33 A330s and were a launch customer in the U.S.," Delta's Anderson said. He added that should Boeing hope that its stretched 787 will take sales from the A330, "its prices have to come way down."

Anderson declined to comment on reports that Delta is looking at placing orders for around 20 narrow-body jets and 20 current-generation, wide-body A330s or Boeing 777s.

(Reporting by Karen Jacobs in Atlanta, additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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By Liana B. Baker

(Reuters) - Dish Network Corp has rolled out an advertising campaign suggesting a deal by a Japanese company to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp could threaten U.S. national security, hoping to sway lawmakers and win support for its rival offer.

The campaign, which so far appears on the Internet and in Washington-area newspapers, is Dish's most public lobbying effort yet against Japan-based SoftBank Corp.

Dish has been pushing the national security angle hard in Washington. Since April, it has filed several documents raising alleged national security risks tied to SoftBank, while also promoting its own $25.5 billion bid for Sprint.

A full-page color ad ran on A5 of the Washington Post on Wednesday comparing SoftBank's proposed acquisition of Sprint to the 2006 Dubai Ports World controversy. In that case, legislators helped block a deal to buy several U.S. ports by stressing the national security concerns.

"In an ever advancing world, 'ports' may change," the newspaper ad says, "but keeping them in American hands never should. Don't outsource our national security."

The ad has a photo of shipping ports sitting above a photo of networking equipment. Dish's accompanying website, Nationalsecuritymatters.com, claims SoftBank spends "significant amounts with Chinese equipment manufacturers for its wireless network in Japan."

Dish also said on the website that China is the leading source of cybersecurity breaches. Dish's online ads link to that webpage, which was set up earlier this week.

In response, SoftBank says on its own website about the deal that it is "committed to using only network equipment that is acceptable to the U.S. government." SoftBank also made a pledge at the end of March that it would not use equipment from China's Huawei in Sprint's network.

WIDE FOCUS

Jeff Blum, Dish's Washington-based deputy general counsel, said the newspaper ads also appeared in Washington trade publications such as Politico, The Hill, Roll Call and the National Journal. Digital ads appear online in the National Journal and Politico, as well as news sites such as Reuters.com.

James Burger, an attorney who focuses on lobbying and policy at Thompson & Coburn in Washington, is skeptical the ads will be effective, especially because Japan is a U.S. ally and not viewed as a threat.

"I'm not convinced that the ads will convince the decision makers," he said.

Burger, who lobbied for Apple in the 1990s, but does not do work for SoftBank, Sprint or Dish, added that the ads will fall on deaf ears if SoftBank follows its pledge to use no Chinese equipment in its U.S. network.

"It seems to me that Dish is harping on the China bashing," he said. "But if SoftBank swears not use Chinese equipment, I wonder how well this will work."

Yet Dish has said its lobbying effort in Washington appears to be working. At a congressional cybersecurity hearing on Tuesday, the SoftBank deal made its way into the debate.

When asked by Virginia Representative Morgan Griffith if he had concerns about the deal, Mike McConnell, former director of national intelligence, said he would not be in favor of a U.S. communications company controlled by a foreign entity.

The ad campaign comes one day after SoftBank said it would grant a waiver to Sprint to allow it to consider Dish's bid.

On Tuesday, Sprint said its recommendation in favor of the SoftBank agreement had not changed. But some major Sprint shareholders, including Paulson & Co and Omega Advisors, have said the Dish offer looks better than SoftBank's deal.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker. Additional reporting by Alina Selyukh in Washington. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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