Publish What You Pay
PWYP
Publish What You Pay (PWYP) is the only global movement working to ensure that revenues from oil, gas and mining help improve people’s lives.
ID: 810270714463-18
Lobbying Activity
Response to Fitness check on public reporting by companies
7 Mar 2018
Feedback submitted on behalf of Publish What You Pay and of Global Witness, Oxfam, Natural Resource Governance Institute and Transparency International EU (see attached file for a presentation of these organisations)
Our organisations welcome the Commission’s intention to carry out a comprehensive review of public reporting by companies, taking into account the need for this reporting to provide insights into companies' long term value creation and impact on ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) factors in the interest of society as a whole.
One area that is particularly important in this respect is the public reporting requirement in relation to payments to governments in the extractives and logging of primary forests sectors introduced by Directive 2013/34/EU and Directive 2013/50/EU. Project by project reporting as mandated by these directives empowers civil society and the broader public to ensure that the revenues generated by the exploitation of natural resources are used for the widest public benefit. If properly managed, natural resources can lift millions in the developing world out of poverty and make a material contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) to which the EU has committed.
Public disclosure of payments to governments by companies exploiting natural resources is an effective means of ensuring that these resources contribute to sustainable development and of fighting corruption, illicit financial flows and mismanagement of revenues. It is a game-changing transparency measure to provide civil society in resource-rich countries with the information needed to hold governments to account for any income made through the exploitation of natural resources and to better understand whether the cost to society of extracting that natural resource is adequately compensated. It also provides for greater accountability on the part of extractive companies. Hence, it is essential that the Commission dedicates sufficient attention to providing civil society and the broader public with the opportunity to provide evidence to the Commission’s assessment of the transparency requirements for the extractives and primary logging sectors.
We call on the Commission to ensure that the public consultation activities foreseen in the roadmap provide adequate space to assess the effectiveness of the current reporting obligations on payments to governments for the extractives and logging industries.
The open public consultation should include questions on how the relevant provisions of the Accounting and Transparency Directives help stakeholders, including civil society, monitor payments by extractive and logging companies to governments, and hold these actors to account, as well as assess the contribution of these industries to sustainable development. Additionally, it should also provide an opportunity to stakeholders to recommend how the current reporting requirements could be improved.
The conference on financial and non-financial reporting foreseen during the second semester of 2018 should feature speakers and discussions on the reporting of payments to governments in the extractives and primary forests sectors. Representatives of civil society organisations in resource rich countries where companies subject to reporting requirements operate should be invited to contribute.
Read full response