After an agreement reached last week, 11 euro zone states are moving forward with implementing a new financial transactions tax. Poland, being outside the euro zone, was not part of the agreement, but Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said on Monday that Poland would “observe this experiment with good will.”

Experts have warned, however, that the players in the Polish financial system – including the Warsaw Stock Exchange, brokerage houses and private brokers – could suffer because of the new tax.

Such a tax would “significantly increase transaction costs, especially for active investors, and will consequently reduce market liquidity. And a market without liquidity is dead,” Marek Pokrywka, director of operations at DM BOŚ, told Parkiet.

“The introduction of a financial transaction tax could be an attractive option for policymakers, due to the fact that it plays on the public opinion that financial institutions were largely responsible for causing the current crisis,” he added.

The the exact details of the tax have not been agreed upon, but it is considered likely that share and bond transactions would be taxed at 0.1 percent, while derivatives would be taxed at a lower rate, likely 0.01 percent, according to the paper.

Poland A.M.