On 7 May 2020, the European Commission (the Commission) put forward a comprehensive approach to further strengthen the European Union’s fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.
The Commission published an ambitious and versatile Action Plan, which sets out tangible measures that the Commission will take over the next 12 months to better enforce, supervise and coordinate the European Union’s rules on combating money laundering and terrorist financing. The aim of this new, comprehensive approach is to shut down any remaining loopholes and remove any weak links in the European Union's rules.
The action plan builds on six pillars:
- Effective implementation of existing rules
- A single EU rulebook
- EU-level supervision
- A support and cooperation mechanism for financial intelligence units
- Better use of information to enforce criminal law
- A stronger EU in the world
The Commission intends to deliver on all these actions by early 2021. To gather the views of citizens and stakeholder on these measures, the Commission launched a public consultation in parallel to the adoption of this action plan. Feedback is accepted until 29 July 2020.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) has welcomed the Commission’s action plan on anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing and stands ready to support the Commission’s considerations through the consultation, while continuing to fulfil its recently strengthened mandate to prevent ML/TF and use new powers to lead, coordinate and monitor the EU financial sector’s fight against ML/TF.
The Commission has also published a more transparent, refined methodology to identify high-risk third countries that have strategic deficiencies in their anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regimes that pose significant threats to the European Union's financial system. This methodology report can be found here.
EU Commission publication can be found here.
EU Commission’s action plan can be found here.
EBA’s press release can be found here.