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In a hearing jointly hosted by the Economic Affairs and Civil Liberties Committees, EU policymakers and guest speakers discussed the latest legislative proposals for fighting money-laundering and terrorist financing in the EU.
Raluca Pruna, head of the Financial Crime Unit at the European Commission, described the details of the recently presented legislative package in her presentation. It will include, among other things, new anti-money laundering measures for member states, creating an EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) and modified rules for crypto-asset transactions.
MEPs largely welcomed the package and questioned its emphasis on crypto-assets over real estate, for example. They also asked if fragmentation could result from the package, which contains proposals for both regulations and directives, and questioned its de-centralized enforcement. MEPs also raised the timetable of adoption and the reform’s impact on international co-operation.
From rules to enforcement
The next session focused on enforcement of AML rules. Mihails Kozlovs from the European Court of Auditors (ECA) described the findings of the ECA’s Special Report on AML, noting that EU bodies currently have limited means to enforce AML rules on the national level, leading to poorly coordinated and slow responses. Joshua Kirschenbaum, non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund and co-author of a Bruegel report on AML measures, considered the Commission proposals bold and necessary, but criticized the quantitative-only calculation of the risk of illicit funding in the proposal. He also hoped that AMLA would eventually gain more resources than is now being proposed.
Lastly, Burkhard Mühl (Head of the European Economic and Financial Crime Centre at Europol) hoped that Europol’s capabilities can be fully used in connection with AMLA while avoiding duplication. He also said that the current proposals do not create strong linkages between law enforcement and other AML actors. After the presentations, MEPs asked the participants about co-ordination between actors after the reform, the duplication of AML efforts, and national conditions in Austria and Denmark.