With the interinstitutional negotiations (‘trilogues’) due to start on 29 March (see EUROPE 12676/36), MEPs from the Renew Europe group have discussed the public country-by-country reporting (CBCR)proposal with a number of experts as part of an online conference held on Wednesday 17 March.
Although determined to achieve one, the Renew Europe group's negotiator on the dossier, Stéphane Séjourné (France), said he was not certain that an agreement would be reached under the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council, in other words, before the end of June.
After 5 years of stalemate, everyone is hoping for quick ‘trilogues’ on this text, which would oblige companies to make public specific accounting data, such as their turnover, or the taxes they have paid (see EUROPE 12653/2).
The problem is that the European Parliament adopted its position in 2017 (see EUROPE 11822/1) and confirmed it in the first reading in 2019 (see EUROPE 12223/13). In the meantime, the composition of the European Parliament has changed and thus so has the negotiating team on this dossier.
While the European Parliament had broadly supported the text at the time, divisions remained between political groups, Mr Séjourné recalled. “The political sensitivity of the new European hemicycle will need to be assessed”, he said.
Among the debates still to be settled, in his opinion, are the confidentiality clause, the aggregation of data outside of Europe, and the definition of the scope of the directive.
His objective during the negotiations will be to “restore levels of confidence between consumers, businesses and public authorities, but also to maintain the international competitiveness of our companies”.
He believes that one possible strategy in the negotiations with the EU Council could be to look at the list of all the data that would be published under the proposal and see which data would be problematic for the competitiveness of companies.
“But I don't want to open the doors to the ultimate landing point too early”, he added cautiously. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)