The ambassadors of the Member States to the EU (Coreper) approved on Wednesday 3 March the negotiating mandate of the Council of the EU on the proposal for ‘public country by country reporting’ (CBCR), which will require companies to make public certain accounting data, such as their revenues or taxes paid (see EUROPE 12653/2).
After 5 years of deadlock, a clear qualified majority in favour of the text had indeed been reached at the meeting of EU Ministers responsible for Competitiveness on 25 February (see EUROPE 12666/8).
It should be recalled that Ireland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, Luxembourg and Malta had indicated in a joint statement that they continued to share the analysis of the Council Legal Service of November 2016 that the proposal should have been negotiated as a tax text, unanimously and within the Ecofin Council (see EUROPE 11758/9).
As for Parliament, which adopted its position on the text at first reading in 2019 (see EUROPE 12223/13), the Committees on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and Legal Affairs (JURI) are also expected to approve the opening of negotiations with the EU Council on Thursday 4 March.
See the EU Council’s negotiating mandate: https://bit.ly/2PkzFjt (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)