The French beneficial ownership register exists since 2017 . In February 2020, France transposed the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive by an order amending Article L.561-46 of the Monetary and Financial Code, providing that information "relating to the surname, customary name, pseudonym, first names, month, year of birth, country of residence and nationality of the beneficial owners and the nature and extent of their effective interest in the company or entity" will be accessible to the public.

In accordance with the provisions of the 5th Directive (EU) 2018/843 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018, France has decided, in order to ensure the protection of personal data and the privacy of beneficial owners, to make the following four items of information subject to restricted dissemination: the day of birth, the place of birth, the home address and the date on which the person became a beneficial owner.

Peer reviewer: 1

Updated: October 31, 2020

In January 2020, France implemented the AMLD5 and provided for the opening to the public of certain information of the Beneficial Ownership registers (BO’s names, surnames, date and place of birth, residence country, nationality, nature and extent of the BO’s interests within the society). Access to BO’s information is free. However, BO data consultation modalities have not been defined yet. Building on Open Ownership’s recommendations, data should be freely available online, bulk, in structured, machine-readable format that complies with BODS, searchable, downloadable and reusable by the public, without a fee, proprietary software, or the need for registration.

Peer reviewer: 1

Updated: April 30, 2020

European 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) imposes to the Member States to open to the general public the beneficial ownership registries they had to set up under the 4th AMLD. France will have to transpose this directive in its national legislation in 2020. The government is working on it. However, public access is expected to be restrained, taking into consideration the October, 21st 2016 Constitutional Council' decision which held that the public opening of the public register of trust infringed the right of privacy in a way that is manifestly disproportionate to the objective pursued.

Updated: October 30, 2019