Brussels, 04/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - During its last week in its role, the Luxembourg presidency organised a high level conference on corporate governance on 28 June in Luxembourg. The current British presidency will organise a third conference on 14 November 2005 in London . During the debate on shareholder rights in a cross border context, the panel underlined that shareholders who do not reside in the Member State where they have their company HQ are still encountering difficult practices when voting is required in another Member State. A press release indicated that participants widely supported the idea of practical and concrete measures for facilitating access in time, to comprehensive information, distance voting at a European level and reducing voting costs.
In his speech Charlie McCreevy indicated that exercising cross border voting rights was encountering many obstacles and pointed out that a second consultation on this specific subject was open till 15 July 2005 (EUROPE 8947). He added that his services were working on a complete assessment of the economic impact of current obstacles to cross border voting and on any action that they could take in this area. Recently, the European corporate governance forum took a position in favour of a targeted European legislation (EUROPE 8978).