Financial Transparency Coalition

In November 2010, the European Commission (EC) opened a public consultation to “seek stakeholders’ views on financial reporting on a country-by-country basis by Multinational Companies (MNCs).” Country-by-country reporting standards would require that MNCs provide information on the profits earned and taxes paid in each of the countries where they operate. Eurodad and other civil society organisations believe that such reporting standards would enhance financial transparency and would provide crucial information needed by developing countries to enhance collection of taxes on the profits made by companies in their countries. While several NGOs, including Eurodad, contributed to the public consultation with a...

While the headlines are full of information that governments did not intend to release, European ministers of finance including UK Chancellor George Osborne last week agreed to a draft directive outlining a powerful new basis for the automatic exchange of tax information between jurisdictions – a directive which, if it does what it says on the tin, would be a dramatic step towards the end for European tax havens. This Tuesday 7 December there was a meeting in Brussels of the Economic and Financial Affairs council (EcoFin, effectively Europe’s council of finance ministers). The press release (still provisional)...

Though Ireland is the European country headlining this week with words like “DEFAULT” and “CONTAGION” looming overhead, let’s not forget that the flames have not yet been completely doused on Greece. To prevent the country from defaulting on its debt, this May the International Monetary Fund and the European Union promised to provide Greece with a €110 billion rescue package. But in the terms of this agreement, Greece was to meet certain deficit goals: including reducing the budget deficit to 7.6% of GDP (earlier this year the IMF estimated the Greek deficit was 8.6 percent in 2009,...

“Coffee shops” are causing trouble and increasing crime rates in small Dutch towns that border neighboring countries. To some degree it’s drug tourism, visitors coming from other countries to engage in infamous Dutch, legal pastimes. However, these “coffee shops” that sell drugs are also facilitating the expansion of organized crime and of the underground economies both in the Netherlands and in neighboring states. As the underground economy grows, the government’s ability to govern slowly erodes, and the bigger fish become harder to track and catch. While drug tourism is a small problem compared to, for example, a corrupt African official...