The Constitutional Court provided its decision on 8 December 2016 regarding the compatibility with the constitution of the public country-by-country (CbC) reporting requirements introduced through the bill on transparency, the fight against corruption and the modernisation of the economy (Sapin II Law) which was adopted on 8 November 2016. According to the adopted Law companies with a turnover exceeding EUR 750 million will be required to file an annual CbC report which will be freely accessible to public from 1 January 2018.
According to the ruling of the Court such public CbC reporting will force companies to disclose their business strategy disregards of their the business freedom and this will enable the other competitors who are operating in the same market to identify key elements of their industrial and commercial strategy. Such a disclosure to the public will hamper the freedom of a company as compared to the mail goal of the public CbC reporting. As a result the Constitutional Court announced article 137 of the Law as unconstitutional and repealed this from the Law.
