MEPs today (20 February) voted to require all European Union member states to keep a register listing the beneficial owners of all companies and trusts, and to make the information available to all online.  

The vote, which took place in the European Parliament’s committee for economic and monetary affairs, was hailed by campaigners. “European parliamentarians have made a major breakthrough in the fight against international organised crime and industrial scale tax evasion,” said Koen Roovers, EU adviser for the Financial Transparency Coalition.  

Catherine Olier, Oxfam’s EU policy adviser, said that such registers would help “poor countries to reclaim the billions they lose from tax dodging every single year”.  

“Until now, the law has prevented us from knowing who owns businesses and trusts, making it all but impossible to track money meant for government coffers,” said Eloise Todd, International Advocacy Director at ONE. “Citizens and law enforcement authorities will be able to access information and follow the money from corrupt and criminal activity.”  

The European Commission’s proposal dates back to February 2012. It advocated only tightening existing rules on money-laundering, imposing extra requirements on gambling companies and requiring all companies to hold information on their beneficial owners.  

The amendment on mandatory public registers was championed by Judith Sargentini (pictured), a Green Dutch MEP, who is one of two MEPs leading the European Parliament’s response to the proposal.  

Members of the public seeking to consult the database would be required to register online. This is less onerous than requiring them to show that they have an interest in consulting the information, an option that was long preferred by Krišjanis Karinš, a centre-right Latvian MEP and the other lead MEP on the Parliament’s response to the proposal.  

Disagreement over access to the registers delayed the vote in the Parliament on at least two occasions.  

The proposal is still being discussed by member states, a number of which – including Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Estonia and Poland – are opposed to the idea of mandatory central registers of beneficial ownership, arguing that there are other equally effective means of achieving greater transparency.  

But David Cameron, the UK’s prime minister, has publicly made the case for a mandatory public register, mirroring reforms planned in the UK. However, Cameron does not want the rules applied to trusts, a legal entity peculiar to common law jurisdictions that provide a legal framework for one person to hold property on behalf of another. France also favours introducing such registers.