Financial Transparency Coalition

Less than a month ago I started working for the Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC) in Brussels. I’m no stranger to the city, having lived and worked here for almost 7 years. In different positions I witnessed the European policy-making process at work. In the European Parliament I helped a Dutch politician with work ranging from co-legislating local public transport to reporting on the progress made by candidate countries wanting to join the European Union (EU). Afterwards I coordinated a network of organizations that aims to make the EU’s consultation and decision-making processes more transparent. In short, I got a...

After a year of negotiations with Member States and the European Commission, and strong involvement by Eurodad and our partners, the European Parliament this week voted in favour of new accounting rules for extractive and logging sectors. The Accounting Directive will require companies in these two sectors to disclose their payments to governments in every country where they operate.

There is a very important project in the new US budget proposal for financial year 2014 supported by the Obama administration. If this proposal is carried through into law (or regulation), the odds for a truly effective global system of automatic information exchange on tax data about the wealthiest citizens would dramatically increase. Alex Cobham has identified the issue (see here) and the original text of the proposal can be found on page 202, of this pdf document.

LONDON - Christian Aid gives two cheers today for European moves to tackle corruption by forcing some large companies to come clean about their payments to governments around the world. However, the charity says the UK Government’s failure to push for stronger EU rules means the upcoming G8 will be an acid test of the commitment to tax transparency. ‘Europe has made some extremely important progress towards tackling corruption linked to the world’s mining, gas, oil and logging companies,’ said Joseph Stead, Christian Aid’s Senior Economic Justice Adviser.