Fundación Ciudadana Civio
Civio
Fundación Ciudadana Civio (“Civio”) is a non-for-profit organisation, specialised in data and investigative journalism.
ID: 108694629120-41
Lobbying Activity
Response to 8th Amendment to Annex II to Directive 2000/53/EC on end-of life vehicles
20 Jun 2022
I am participating in this public consultation on the Open Data Directive, with respect to the high value dataset on Companies and Company Ownership, as I believe that open company data brings multiple important benefits to society:
- Discovery and deterrence of money laundering, which costs the EU almost €200 billion per year;
- Decrease of corruption in public procurement, which costs the EU around 5 billion euro per year;
- Business opportunities worth thousands of millions of euros (in the UK opening the company register created business opportunities worth an estimated €780 million);
- Reduced time and costs for Europe’s 24 million SMEs in reporting and checking ownership of other companies.
The draft Implementing Regulation calls for the publication of only basic company information and company documents, without the names of company legal owners, legal representatives, and beneficial owners. This would render the dataset ineffective: CSOs and journalists would not have access to the data they need to investigate corruption, and SMEs would not be able to carry out proper due diligence on potential partners.
Yet, those who can pay for this data are able to obtain it in most EU Member States. In countries which do provide full access to this data for free, it has only been beneficial with no negative consequences.
I call on the Commission to act on the promise of the Open Data Directive and to include in the Implementing Regulation a requirement to open up the following data free of charge (note: data marked * is already in the Commission’s draft):
- Basic Information: Name of the company *; Company status*; Founding date; Cessation date (if applicable); Historical names; Registered Address(es) *; Legal form *; Identifiers (registration or company number * / VAT number/phone number/ email); Data fromVIES; Member State where registered *; Activity Code using the NACE code *; Number of employees; Turnover; Capital; Detailed information on branches; All changes (to individual companies & list of companies dissolved) with date of last update; Name(s) of company legal representative(s); Name of company's directors; Names and details of authorised legal representatives with appointment and termination dates; All changes and date of the last update.
- Documents and Accounts: Legal entities; Accounting documents, including consolidated financial statements, non-financial statements, management reports, transfer prices reports, and other reports; Detailed data on branches; Intra-group transactions; Date of the last update; Other company documents provided to the authority;
- Ownership: Name of the legal owners and beneficial owners; Share (percentage) of ownership, and nature and extent of Beneficial Interest held (in shareholding and/or voting rights) as well as legal ownership; Start (and end date) of the beneficial owner relationship; Month and Year of birth; Nationality; Country of residence; Owner identifier; Names of shareholders; Country of residence of the shareholders/owners; Capital links between companies; All changes and date of the last update
- Insolvency: Type of insolvency proceeding; Time limit for lodging claims; Date of closing insolvency proceedings; The court where proceedings is to be lodged; All changes and date of the last update
Furthermore, we call for:
- Data published under fully open licences permitting reuse and processing with no limits such as attribution.
- Requirement to move towards the digital filing of documents permitting company documents to be available in machine readable and eventually in fully open formats, by maximum 2030.
- Online databases searchable by selection of any or all fields with results viewable online or exportable as open data.
If the Commission truly wants to create an EU that is hostile to money-laundering, corruption, and tax evasion, it should expand the Implementing Regulation to include company ownership information.
Read full response8 Jul 2018
We welcome the opportunity to comment on the Proposal for increasing access to critical company information to all stakeholders, particularly those for whom the existing system fails to work, including SMEs, employees, civil society, investors and law enforcement.
The proposal for the Directive extends the scope of access to information about companies, and correctly identifies many of the issues, particularly the barriers to access and use of data. However, we live in a world where people and companies get their information where, when and how they want it (via apps, via Software As A Service and Data As A Service platforms, and via deep integration with other datasets).
In order to deliver the outcomes of the directive, it is essential that the company information identified by the proposal is not just free of charge, but published under an open licence that allows reuse, and as structured data that can easily be combined with other datasets. By making this information available as open data – an approach recognized by both the European Commission and the G8 as maximizing the utility of the data – the underlying goals of the directive can be achieved both quickly, easily, and for almost zero cost. Without open data we do not believe the that the underlying goals will be achieved. As the Open Definition describes, open data “means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose (subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness)”.
Our recommendations for the proposal are therefore as follows:
- Company information must be made available as structured data, free of charge, under an open reuse licence
- The core data points made available should, at a minimum, be those that allow companies, employees and other stakeholders to understand who they’re doing business with, and the risks involved in doing so, and therefore should include the directors, shareholders, and crucially, beneficial owners.
- The Commission should work with wider stakeholders to understand how further information made available as open data could further reduce the barriers to cross border business, increasing trust and transparency, and creating a hostile environment for bad actors.
These overall recommendations are described more fully, with reference to the proposed directive, in the attached document. We would be happy to engage further with the Commission on this subject.
The Civio Foundation (Fundación Ciudadana Civio) is an independent, non-profit organization based in Spain which monitors public authorities, reports to all citizens and lobbies to achieve true and effective transparency within our institutions.
Read full response