At their plenary session, the members of the European Parliament adopted the position of the committees on economic and monetary affairs and on civil liberties by rejecting the Commission's proposed blacklist of jurisdictions at high risk of money laundering. This takes the form of a delegated act to the fourth anti-money laundering directive, and was rejected in a resolution on Wednesday 17 May by 392 votes to 80 with 207 abstentions.
The most recent blacklist (not to be confused with the future list of tax havens) features eleven countries (Afghanistan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Guiana, Iraq, Laos, Syria, Uganda, Vanuatu, Yemen, North Korea and Iran).
In January this year, Parliament rejected the delegated act to the anti-money laundering directive which proposed removing Guiana from the list. The Commission is now proposing to replace this country with Ethiopia, in line with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The list was rejected in committee in early May (see EUROPE 11781).
“The Commission thought it could get away with a cosmetic change to the ridiculous list it put before us in January”, said French Green MEP Eva Joly.
The Greens/EFA group is calling on the Commission to “play the game by carrying out its own assessment of high-risk countries so that it can finally present a credible and realistic list”.
The S&D group announced before the vote that it would vote against it. “The Commission should define its own criteria instead of just copying the FATF list”, explained Portuguese member Ana Gomes, on behalf of the group. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)