The United Kingdom has raised concerns of a legal nature over the provision aiming to bring in public registers of the beneficial owners of trusts, as the European Commission is hoping to do in Europe in the framework of the revision of the anti-money laundering directive, in response to the Panama Papers scandal. At the Ecofin Council of Tuesday 8 November, the legal service took position, concluding that it was not legally possible to make these registers public.
We need to "make sure we have a legally sound proposal", said the representative of the British government. Trusts are legitimate entities which are used for private, not commercial, purposes, he added. They therefore require a different treatment in law.
Vice-President of the Commission Valdis Dombrovskis immediately responding by pointing out that the Commission's proposal does not include family trusts, only those with commerical activities. "It's a very important part of our proposal", he stressed.
In his statement, however, the representative of the legal services said that information on the beneficial owners is personal data protected by EU law from unjustified release. "Making these data public needs to be justified and necessary for legitimate purposes. It is undeniable that the fight against fraud is a legitimate purpose", but the issue is that the authorities, not the general public, bear the responsibility for sanctioning these behaviours, the representative explained.
"Disclosure for the sake of fighting fraud runs a very high risk of being illegal", he concluded.
The Slovak Presidency of the Council of the EU believes that there will be agreement on at least some elements of the proposal at December's Ecofin. Several member states supported this timeframe. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)