*** modified Thursday 30 March, 12 noon ***
On Wednesday 29 March, the Ambassadors of the Member States of the European Union (Coreper) approved the negotiating mandate of the Council of the EU for negotiations with the European Parliament on a proposal amending Directive (2019/1153) in order to establish a single point of access to facilitate access to centralised bank accounts registries by national competent authorities.
In order to better fight money laundering and financing of terrorism, rapid access to financial information is required to effectively investigate criminal activities that generate illegal income, so that it is possible to successfully trace and confiscate the instruments and proceeds of crime.
“The amounts generated by criminal activities are simply shocking”, said the Swedish Minister of Justice, Gunnar Strömmer. In his opinion, “financial information is crucial for enforcers in the EU in order to trace and confiscate illegal money and follow potential leads”, he said.
In this sense, the proposed amendment to Directive (EU) 2019/1153, as part of the European Commission’s anti-money laundering legislative package announced in July 2021 (see EUROPE 12766/5), would allow the competent authorities responsible for the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences to access and search the interconnected system of centralised bank account registers via one single access point.
The goal of this is to be able to establish more quickly whether a person holds bank accounts in other Member States, without there being a requirement to ask the competent authorities of all Member States.
The EU Council proposes to go beyond the terms envisaged in the European Commission’s proposal and to require financial institutions to share bank transaction records in a standardised format when this is completed within the context of an investigation.
By adopting the negotiating mandate on 29 March, the Swedish Presidency of the EU Council can now start negotiations with the European Parliament.
See the legislative text agreed by Member states: https://aeur.eu/f/64j (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)