Advancing new collaborative mechanisms for the profiling of MNEs in national, regional and global group registers

The importance of Multi National Enterprise Groups (MNEs) on the economy is ever-growing and at the same time, it becomes more complex to capture their activities and structures accurately in official national statistics. The establishment of Large Case Units and the introduction of profiling of MNEs are measures to capture the activities of MNEs correctly so that consistency between statistics can be achieved. At international level, the same challenges can be found. In Europe the existence of the European Statistical System and accompanying legal frameworks make it possible to organize European collaboration, resulting in a EuroGroups Register and European profiling and the Early Warning System. The benefit from a Global Group Register (GGR) seems evident: providing unique identification of MNEs and insight in the structure of internationally operating MNEs helps to create valuable information for policymakers on many different economic themes. At a global level, we do not have legal facilities like those in the EU, which makes it important to look for other solutions. An initial GGR has to be built upon publicly available sources and upon sources from commercial data providers. The benefits of establishing a Global Group Register are multiple and work in this area should be encouraged.