The largest open database of companies in the world
8 years ago, OpenCorporates surveyed access to official company register data in the EU. To our knowledge, this was the first time that this had been done in a systematic way. The results were not good. Data and access were routinely restricted on a pay-to-play basis. If you had the money, you could access it … Continue reading Is this a fork in the road for EU company data?
The EU’s Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) came into force last week, on 10 January 2020. It was partly a response to the Panama Papers, a leak of thousands of documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca which revealed the extent to which the true beneficial owners of companies can be concealed behind a complex … Continue reading 5AMLD launches: close but no cigar
Great news: last week, the Council of Europe approved the "Directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information" (press release). This was the last opportunity for the directive to be rejected or changed, and it will go into force 20 days after the directive is published in the EU Official Journal (probably … Continue reading It’s official: EU Company Registers to go open data (subject to…)
Two months ago, OpenCorporates published our ground-breaking report on access to company data in Open Government Partnership countries. The results were not good, with an average score of just 21 out of 100. Following this, Neelie Kroes, the EU Vice-President in charge the Digital Agenda, including open data, tweeted about the report, noting that the 15 … Continue reading Access to EU company data is very poor, Neelie
The consultation for the EU Corporate Governance Green Paper closes today. Didn't know know there was one? No, neither did we till a week ago, and even then it was pretty much by accident. Given the tight timing, and the fact that we've got a fairly big and important job to do other than responding to … Continue reading Our response to the EU Corporate Governance Green Paper
