Sapin II: a very opaque transparency bill in France

Between 2012 and 2014, France was considered a champion of corporate transparency by its European peers. In 2013, the French Parliament passed a law setting a public country-by-country reporting (CBCR) for banks which likely influenced the vote for the EU Capital Requirements Directives (CRD) a few months later. Public CBCR is widely seen as an efficient way to monitor tax strategies of multinational companies, forcing them to disclose information on their operations (turnover, profits, taxes, subsidiaries, etc) on a country-by-country breakdown (including tax havens). In 2014, France was one of the first countries to transpose the EU Transparency and Accounting Directives, setting up public reporting for extractive companies, different from CBCR but equally useful, commonly known as Payment to Government reporting (PtG reporting).

However, despite promises from various government members and President Hollande himself, the extension of public CBCR to cover all large multinationals was never voted in Parliament. In mid-2016, in the aftermath of the Panama Papers, the French government introduced a new bill on transparency, the anti-corruption fight and the modernisation of economic life, commonly known as the “Sapin II bill”. Initially reluctant to establish a public CBCR, the government eventually backed down and introduced a watered down version of the measure.

In this case study, part of the PWYP Data Extrators, PWYP France Coordinator Quentin Parrinello used data-driven stories to outline how proposed changes to Payment to Government reporting would have allowed companies such as Total to hide a large part of their activities.