Update: As you'll remember from our last call, we believe we currently have a qualified majority of Member States in Council in support of adopting a position on the public CBCR proposal. This creates an opportunity for progress on the file, but the German Presidency of the Council had been reluctant to table the file. 

Since the last call, we've had a number of advocacy actions targeting the Ministers in Member States that support public CBCR, calling on them to push Germany to put the file on the agenda of upcoming technical and political meetings in Council, as well as a lot of communication with staff in perm reps in Brussels. Last week Germany cancelled a scheduled meeting of the technical working party where the public CBCR file is discussed. They haven't shared any information on their plans for the proposal with the Member States requesting information and haven't circulated a new compromise text. Minister Olaf Scholz continues to indicate progress is likely but that there is a disagreement in the coalition on the German position, and information from other sources echoes this. In theory, the German position isn't relevant at the moment, since the Council Presidency acts (and votes) in a neutral position, so their responsibility is to enable dialogue in Council. We're in a similar situation to last month, whereby it is still possible for Germany to table the file for discussion in November, but they haven't made any commitment to do so. Our allies in Germany feel external pressure will be important to motivate the Presidency to do so, so we'll discuss proposed campaign actions during our call.

Draft agenda for October CBCR call, date TBC

1)      Hello and welcome!

2)      Updates

- EU level

- Member states 

- Updates from other countries  

3)      Advocacy and campaigning 

- Update on advocacy letters and actions to supportive Ministers

- Proposed campaign and advocacy actions to German Presidency of EU

- Proposed national campaign & advocacy actions

4)      Next call

5)      Any other business?

HELPFUL RESOURCES AVAILABLE

State of play briefing (December 2019)

Q&A response to European Commission legislative proposal

Q&A on business and investor case for public CBCR

2-pager on introducing public CBCR that is fit for purpose

Blog article – 8 reasons why CBCR is good for business

Blog article – Why blacklist is a bad idea

Oxfam 2017 EU report on bank CBCR – Opening the Vaults

Transparency International's Corporate Tax Tracker tool

Other useful documents

European Commission legislative proposal

European Parliament summary of text adopted on 4 July 2017

Latest Council Presidency compromise, dated November 2019

Proposed Council changes to the preamble, dated December 2019