The EU Member States’ internal market and industry ministers exchanged views on the proposed public Country-by-Country (CbC) Reporting directive. The outcome of that meeting indicated that there is broad political support to move forward with the directive which proposes to mandate the public disclosure of tax payments in the EU by multinational enterprises with consolidated revenue of more than €750 million.

The week following the initial exchange of views saw the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU, mandated by Member States to engage in negotiations with the European Parliament for the swift adoption of the proposed Directive on public CbC Reporting.

The draft Directive, which was first proposed in 2016, has been subject to disagreement as to its legal basis. The disagreement centred on whether the proposal should be subject to the ordinary legislative procedure which requires qualified majority voting in the Council, or should it be treated as a tax matter subject to the special legislative procedure requiring unanimous approval at Council level.

If the Directive is adopted, Member States will have two years to transpose the Directive into national law.