Tighter rules and better enforcement to stop the flow of dirty money 

Plenary will adopt its negotiating mandate for a package of proposals reforming the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) policy. The draft laws foresee new customer due diligence rules for businesses and give Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) and other national authorities access to information on beneficial ownership. The new rules would also apply to goods such as yachts, planes and cars worth over €200 000 and goods stored in free zones. At the same time, transparency rules on crowdfunding platforms and anonymous instruments, such as crypto-assets, would be tightened to prevent abuses.

MEPs want to make it harder to hide illicit activities from the media and civil society. Journalists, civil society organisations, higher education institutions and other people with a legitimate interest would, under their proposal, have access to beneficial ownership registers. Given the manifest risk of misuse by criminals, MEPs want to ban all schemes granting EU citizenship rights in exchange for investment (“golden passports”) and impose more stringent controls on residence-by-investment schemes ("golden visas”).

New EU authority for consistent rules enforcement

To ensure rules are enforced coherently across the EU, these draft reforms would create a European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) with supervisory and investigative powers. For serious breaches of anti-money laundering rules, this new body could impose sanctions of up to €2 million, or 10% of the total annual turnover of a company.

The draft negotiating mandates on the three legislative texts adopted at committee level will be announced to plenary on Monday, at the opening of the session. If there are no objections by Tuesday at midnight, talks with the Council on the final form of the legislation may start immediately.

Procedure: ordinary legislative procedure, first reading agreements