Brussels, 03/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - Upon the request of the rapporteur, Sergio Cofferati (S&D, Italy), the European Parliament's Conference of Presidents on Thursday 4 June will decide whether or not to postpone the vote in plenary on the draft shareholders' rights directive from 10 June to some time in July. Cofferati wants more time to negotiate this highly controversial issue, particularly the aspect related to country-by-country reporting.
The ALDE group says that postponing the vote won't help because the views of the various stakeholders have been known for a long time. The ECR is reported to oppose the idea of postponing the vote until July for the same reasons. ALDE says it isn't reporting that's problematic as such, but other aspects such as directors' pay. Pascal Durand (Greens/EFA, France) told EUROPE that he suspected that the EPP and ALDE groups were using this as a pretext to avoid voting on reporting. At ALDE, mostly circles around its negotiator, Sweden's Cecilia Wikström, fear that reporting could be used by the rapporteur as a bargaining chip to win concessions from the member states in the trialogue meetings on measures that the liberals do not support.
Sylvie Goulard of France says she supports reporting, but there is the question of its legal basis and the type of business activities it would apply to, and also the question of what the rest of the world is doing in this connection. At the EP, it is said that if the Conference of Presidents does not authorise a postponement, then that would undermine the EP's special TAXE committee that is trying to shed light on aggressive corporate tax avoidance because it would mean that the EP refuses to discuss company transparency about their tax affairs. (Elodie Lamer)