Access to EU company data is very poor, Neelie

“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 EU countries in the OGP didn’t give open access to company data, and wondering how the others performed. Well, Commissioner Kroes, we’ve answered that question, scoring all 27 EU countries on access to company data, just in time for the EU Digital Agenda Assembly, tomorrow in Brussels. And the results are not good. But not have only have we published a report similar to the one for Open Government Partnership countries, we’ve also investigated the particular European-level barriers that block or hinder access. The report finds: [1] Access to company data in EU countries is very poor, with an average score of just 23 out of 100 points. Though this is slightly better than for Open Government Partnership countries, the OGP figure includes several developing countries without even functioning online company registers. [2] Several, including Spain and Austria are completely closed, not even allowing the search for the existence of a company without payment. Others have only the sparsest information shown for free, and Greece has no complete online register. [3] There are several EU directives and projects that positively hinder access to company data, and a recent one, on the connection of company registers, threatens to harden the move towards commercialisation of the registers. [4] The open data concept has barely touched company registers, with only the UK publishing open company data, while Belgium has said it intends to do so to in the future... We’ll be presenting this report at the Digital Agenda Assembly tomorrow