Poland and Hungary will not support the plan to introduce a global minimum corporate tax level agreed by G7 finance ministers this weekend unless there is a carve-out to protect substantive business activities in their countries, according to their finance ministries.

The stand taken by the two central European countries suggests resistance to a deal within the EU could stretch well beyond Ireland and other destinations favoured by multinationals seeking to minimise their tax burdens.

“We shouldn’t have the G7 dictating what tax rate we have in our country,” Tadeusz Koscinski, Poland’s finance minister, told the Financial Times. Setting a lower tax rate was an important way for countries to catch up with more advanced economies by attracting innovation from abroad, he said.