Wertpapiere: Mehr Transparenz erforderlich!

I want to thank all participating colleagues, in particular the rapporteurs and the team involved in negotiating the result.

I also want specially to thank the NGOs and civil society which have ensured that pressure from outside Parliament encouraged us to take up the responsibility in this directive, in particular the NGO Publish What You Pay, because of their struggle for the items included in our directive.

But they have achieved only the first step. Ecological and employment criteria form part of the responsibility we have to take into account.

We also want to recognise that the requirement of country-by-country reporting of taxes and other financial data by companies in all sectors has to be included, and I guess that the discussion is just now under way among Member States and the Commission about extending financial transparency to all sectors, as I have already said earlier, especially to tackle the widespread tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance that costs governments billions of euros each year and which belongs to the theme we have been discussing here.