On Friday 10 July MEPs will adopt a resolution on the Commission’s action plan to combat money laundering (see EUROPE 12482/8). After debating this subject on Wednesday with the Commission and the EU Council, they voted on Thursday 9 July on the amendments tabled to the draft resolution.
During the debate, MEPs were broadly satisfied with the Commission’s action plan. Nevertheless, many of them expressed concern about the poor implementation of EU rules by Member States and asked the Commission to pursue its infringement proceeding.
“The Commission has referred three Member States to the Court of Justice for non-transposition of the 4th AML [Anti-Money Laundering] Directive. We have sent out three reasoned opinions for the incomplete transposition of the 4th Directive, issued four Letters of Formal Notice for non-conform transposition of the 4th Directive and 17 others for the non-communication of measures under the 5th AML Directive”, said Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis.
For his part, Michael Roth, the German State Secretary for European Affairs, assured that the fight against money laundering will be one of the central themes of the German EU Council Presidency, mentioning forthcoming EU Council conclusions.
The resolution under scrutiny
The draft joint text, supported by the EPP, S&D, Renew Europe, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups (see EUROPE 12520/4), welcomes in particular the Commission’s intention to present a proposal for a European body to monitor the fight against money laundering and welcomes the transformation of some of the existing directives into regulations.
It also calls for the scope of EU rules to be extended to cover crypto-assets, for the Commission to tighten up on ‘golden visas’ and for a European ‘grey list’ of non-Member States with a high risk of money laundering to be drawn up.
All the amendments by the ID group were rejected, while some amendments by the GUE/NGL group were adopted, particularly in order to call for entities located in tax havens not to have access to the financial resources of the European Union, including the aid set up to deal with the economic and social consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It should be noted that the text also mentions the recent accounting scandal involving the German payment service provider Wirecard (see EUROPE 12515/13) and asks the Commission to study ways to improve the functioning of the accounting sector.
ID group attacks NGOs again
The Identity and Democracy group has once again attacked NGOs, accusing them of being a breeding ground for money laundering.
In an alternative draft resolution, the group calls on the Commission “to incorporate NGOs within the scope of the definition of obliged entities under the Anti-Money Laundering Directive, to scrutinise their funding and expenditure thoroughly, and to adopt far-reaching transparency rules”.
MEP Gunnar Beck (ID, Germany) also deplored in the debate that the EU Court of Justice had ruled that Hungary’s transparency requirements for NGOs were contrary to EU law.
Michael Roth reacted, “Under the pretext that some MEPs do not appreciate the values of NGOs, trying to equate them with money laundering or terrorist financing organisations is not normal, because we are talking about drug trafficking, organised crime and it has absolutely nothing to do with European civil society”. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)