On Tuesday 11 July, the German and Irish finance ministers, Wolfgang Schäuble and Paschal Donohoe, gave their reasons for rejecting public access to information on the beneficial owners of trusts.
Under the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU, the co-legislators failed to agree on the revision of the ‘anti-money-laundering’ directive. The position of the Commission and the European Parliament is to provide public access to this information for commercial trusts and companies, and to persons able to demonstrate a legitimate interest for trusts of a private nature.
The Council, however, felt that it was not possible to distinguish between these two types of trust, whilst Parliament quoted the recent conclusions of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) stating the contrary.
“There are vast amounts of trusts used for entirely legitimate reasons by our citizens”, Donohoe explained. “If we ask our citizens to provide information, if the same information is required to be made public as well, this could cause problems for us”, he said.
Schäuble stressed the German culture of protecting fiscal confidentiality. He also pointed out that taxation is a decentralised competence in Germany.
When asked about Germany’s refusal to agree to strict rules on politically exposed persons (PEP), Schäuble explained that the government was set in place by the parliament, “which is why the government has a huge respect for the parliament”, he stressed. He went on to describe the caution with which members of parliament and their family are increasingly treated by small banks, which sometimes refuse to open accounts for them because “it’s too risky”.
The German minister was also questioned about his refusal to agree to public country-by-country reporting. He referred to the international OECD agreement (on reporting to the tax authorities) and stressed that cooperation would not benefit “if we fail to live up to the rules we have”. In 2017, Germany holds the presidency of the G20 and “colleagues remind us what we have signed up to”, Schäuble said. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)