Companies engaged in the extraction of oil, gas, minerals and timber must disclose how much they paid for the rights. EPTV spoke to the Parliament’s chief negotiator.

Interview: More transparency, less corruption

and the Parliament's rapporteur  on transparency issues.

You've been in negotiations to get rid  of corruption in exploitation industries.

What does it actually mean  on the ground?

We really wanted to get more disclosure,  more transparency,

particularly for extractive industries -  oil, gas, logging companies as well -

who are in there taking out  natural resources from those countries,

that they should state very clearly,  as part of their annual accounting process,

what payments they make  to those governments and for projects.

We think that's good for  the communities in those countries.

If you look at Nigeria,  you wouldn't believe

it's an importer of energy  even though it has massive oil reserves.

It's importing and has oil that has  gone missing or been misappropriated

worth over 200 billion pounds.  This is what we want to tackle.

We want communities to hold  their governments to account

as to what they do with those resources.

So companies investing, extracting,  must say what they pay

It was a difficult negotiation.  You had opposition from the Council

and even within the EP  there were a lot of members

who were a bit uneasy about this.  What was the problem?

When we're trying to make  big breakthroughs

in areas of global transparency...  In the end this is about global rules.

We're following in the footsteps  of the US.

They had the Dodd-Frank rules.  The SEC introduced the same kind of rules.

We want equivalence.  It's a global industry, global standards.

Industry always wants something  that's easier for them.

but we didn't accept that  because we knew they have to do it.

They know for their own accounts  what money they pay

for access to oil blocks  or for access to resources and projects,

so they do that anyway. There's no big  additional cost to put it into a report.

They also didn't want to have to do it  at the level that we wanted.

We always said project level.  They wanted government level,

But we've seen cases with companies  where we'd never have found out.

In one case one million was expropriated  by the minister of that African country,

and the people of Nigeria  didn't get the benefit.

The money from exploitation industries  is worth to countries in development

far more than the international aid  they get. In the case of Africa in 2008

the amount from oil, gas  and mineral exports

was nine times  the international aid they had,

something like 393 billion dollars,  so it really does matter.

We met with the NGOs,  we met with campaigners,

we met with campaigners  from Publish What You Pay

When they said to us in our hearing that  for every person in that particular region,

they just have 10 euros per person  for education, health, clean water...

This is not acceptable,  particularly when it's their own resources.

That's their heritage. They must be able  to hold their governments to account

as to what they do with the income  they get from these extractive companies.

The companies may not be doing wrong  but they're paying for access.

We want to hold the countries to account

so they can give the natural resources  revenue back to the local communities.

This obviously needs  to be a global thing,

because some countries  are a little less scrupulous.

People will argue that if Europe  and the US have tight rules,

there are other countries that will  want access to those raw materials

and they might not be as careful.  -I think that's a fair argument to make

and we've tackled it head on  by looking at what is going on.

that companies wanting to list  on the Shanghai stock exchange

So it's not true to say that  this isn't going to happen elsewhere.

the EU and the US are setting  the global standard.

And I think many other countries  will follow suit.

We're in an age of corporate  social responsibility,

we're in an age where investors want  to know, before they invest in a company,

whether it has good transparency rules  and disclosure.

consumers and investors  will drive this new agenda.

We're bringing in legislation  to push it further.

Arlene McCarthy, thanks very much.  -Thank you.