Financial Transparency Coalition

Green MEP Sven Giegold tabled a question to the European Commission in July asking about the EU’s position on the IASB’s revision to its constitution that has downgraded its obligation to anyone but those people who use accounts to make investment decisions. I discussed that issue here. Now the Commission has replied as follows:

Answer given by Mr Barnier on behalf of the Commission The Commission shares the view of the Honourable Member regarding the importance of properly taking into account the public interest in the IFRS standards setting.

Publish What You Pay and Eurodad have launched a briefing paper (PDF) calling on the EU to propose legally binding measures to require natural resource companies to publish key financial information for each country and project in which they operate. In recent months, civil society groups working on financial transparency and on tax and development have actively engaged the European Commission and other European institutions responsible for drafting key legislative and non-legislative proposals that will potentially reform European financial reporting standards. This paper aims to contribute to the current debate...

The Monetary Affairs Committee of the EU Parliament has sent the following letter to the European Commission:

Mr Michel Barnier Commissioner for Internal Market and Services European Commission Rue de la Loi 200 B-1049 Brussels 25 May 2011 Country by Country Reporting Dear Commissioner Barnier We wanted to thank you for taking the time to meet with some of us last week in Strasbourg and for your continued positive engagement on country-by-country reporting and your public commitment to come forward with legislative proposals later this year . Before those proposals are published, we would like to reiterate a few key points from our meeting which we hope...

PROPUBLICA/FORTUNE – Did GE pay U.S. income taxes in 2010? The company known for minimizing its tax bill made a muddled situation worse responding to a New York Times report suggesting it might get a refund. GE now says it has a small tax liability for 2010.