Since its launch in 2016, the pilot initiative for automatic exchange of beneficial ownership information has not yielded any follow up results or actions by the participating governments to further develop on this topic.

As a European Union Member State, France has transposed the 5th anti-money laundering directive that provides for the interconnection of the beneficial ownership registers at the EU level. The national registers on beneficial ownership information will be interconnected directly to facilitate cooperation and exchange of information between Member States. In addition, Member States will have to put in place verification mechanisms of the beneficial ownership information collected by the registers to help improve the accuracy of the information and the reliability of these registers. The European interconnection of registers project is underway and will be achieved during the first semester of 2021. Data on legal persons and trusts will therefore be interconnected with other member states' registers.

It is, however, worth noting that, to date, the French beneficial ownership register remains incomplete with only a roughly 70 percent of entities that have complied with their obligation to declare their beneficial owners, according to the National Council of Clerks of Commercial Courts (Conseil National des Greffiers des Tribunaux de Commerce). An incomplete register will, undoubtedly, undermine the exchange of beneficial ownership information.

Updated: October 31, 2020

As one of the signatories of the G5 initiative, France is fully committed in the development of the pilot initiative for automatic exchange of beneficial ownership information. France has however not joined yet the Beneficial Ownership Leadership Group that the UK government launched in May 2019 at the Open Government Partnership Summit in Ottawa .

Updated: October 30, 2019