The Finance Ministers of the EU Member States gave their first impressions of the legislative package to combat money laundering, presented by the European Commission on 20 July, at a video conference meeting of the Ecofin Council on Monday 26 July.
The package includes: - a proposal for a Regulation establishing a new European authority dedicated to combating money laundering (see EUROPE 12766/4); - a proposal for a Regulation establishing a single set of rules (see EUROPE 12766/5); - a proposal for a sixth ‘anti-money laundering’ Directive; - a proposal to recast the Regulation (2015/847) on the traceability of money transfers to extend its scope to crypto-assets.
“I would stress that this new package does not mean we will stop enforcing our current rules. So we will continue to ensure that our existing anti-money laundering rules are correctly implemented. And that means fully enforcing the 4th and 5th anti-money laundering Directives”, European Commissioner for Financial Services Mairead McGuinness told Ministers.
At the meeting, the package was welcomed by the Member States, although they still need to analyse all the proposals in depth. In particular, several countries stressed the need for a new strong and independent ‘anti-money laundering’ authority.
For Belgian Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem, it is crucial to ensure that the design of the new authority is based on a thorough assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the current framework, taking into account the diversity of obliged entities.
It is also important to him that the new authority meets the highest standards in terms of political independence and, in terms of governance, that the voice of all Member States is sufficiently heard and listened to.
For its part, Germany addressed the question of the location of the future authority, pointing out that it will need a “strong and suitable location that is fit for the actions against money laundering”.
The criteria for identifying the risk entities that will be subject to direct supervision by the new authority will undoubtedly be one of the major points of negotiation between the Member States. Several countries raised the issue at the meeting.
This was the case in particular for Spain, France and Luxembourg, which considered that the size of the entities should not be the most important criterion for this selection.
“Cross border should not be the single most criteria, it should be one criteria but the key is obviously if the activity entails a lot of risk”, said Luxembourg’s Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna.
European limit for cash payments
Unsurprisingly, the Commission’s proposal to establish an EU-wide 10,000 euros limit for cash transactions was debated at the meeting.
“This does not mean that we do away with cash. Cash is extremely important and I know this is a particularly sensitive issue for some Member States”, said Ms McGuinness when presenting the package to Ministers.
In particular, Austria indicated that it did not see the “added value” of such a limit at EU level, while the Czech Republic stressed that this will be an issue that will require further discussion.
On the other hand, Hungary and Lithuania have already voted in favour of the threshold proposed by the Commission. France, which supported the proposal, felt that the threshold should be lower than 10,000 euros.
For his part, Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank (ECB), stressed that such a limit would have to respect the principle of proportionality and that the negative effect that this measure could have on the use of cash in the EU would have to be carefully assessed.
At a press conference after the meeting, Slovenian Finance Minister Andrej Šircelj expressed his determination to make as much progress as possible on these proposals during the Slovenian Presidency of the EU Council. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)