It is my intention to make these short notes on various significant decisions or developments in Europe, some of which may go virtually unnoticed, as regular as possible.
Cutting off terrorism's sources of funding. The first relates to the support of the Parliament's committee on civil liberties and justice for the European Commission's proposal to fight the funding of terrorism. The EU already has two directives against money laundering, but the funding of terrorism has not yet been specifically targeted. This despite the fact that several studies have shown to what extent terrorism is paid for by seemingly “normal” bank transactions, by ill-controlled flows of money, although many of these come to light. In July of last year, the European Commission proposed a third directive which extends the obligation on banks, insurance houses, lawyers, art dealers and other “high-risk” professions to inform the authorities of suspicious transactions which could be covering the funding of terrorist organisations. These transactions will be considered “criminal acts”. Some of the professions in question were less than enthusiastic at first. The EU lawyers' association said that the draft was premature, because the previous directives had not yet been transported into the national laws of several Member States; and to add a new text to these could lead to problems and confusion. The Banking Federation of the European Union (FBE) agreed on the guideline based on risk (obligation to provide information will only relate to genuinely dangerous transactions), but felt that some of the provisions would be hard to apply; for example, identifying the owners of the transactions and the special vigilance called for on “politically exposed” clients (in practice, it made it obligatory to keep an eye on all transactions carried out by political figures).
The parliamentary committee, which is chaired by Jean-Marie Cavada of the ALDE group, adopted the report by Harmut Nassauer (EPP-ED) this week, which approves, strengthens and clarifies various aspects of the draft European Constitution. Clients' identity must be verified for all transactions in excess of 15,000 EUR, and anonymous or open accounts under borrowed names will be banned. Clients are not entitled to know that an investigation has been opened. The text has already seen contact with the Council, so that the directive may well be definitively adopted at the end of its first reading in June, as a second reading is not needed if the Council agrees with the Parliament's text.
One step closer towards the trans-European transport networks. The second subject to highlight is the political agreement between the Member States on the new “Eurovignette” directive, on taxing heavy goods vehicles for using certain infrastructures. This won't come as news to our regular readers; the information published on this in our bulletin 8933 is the most comprehensive of any that's been published, and I refer anyone who wants to know the details of the agreement back to it. However, it may be possible that some of our readers, floundering in the sheer quantity of the events of last week and the beginning of this, may not have fully grasped the political and economic implications of the compromise. Last February, speaking before the MEPs, Commission Vice-President Jacques Barrot repeated that the new “Eurovignette” directive was one of the five indispensable pillars for the European programme of trans-European transport networks to be achieved. And, in turn, this programme is one of the preconditions for the Lisbon Strategy not to fall on its face again. In practice, the new toll regime for road transport will help to beat transport congestion and reduce pollution, and will help to consolidate the great transport axes (particularly the rail corridors) which will link firstly the Member States which are still partially cut off from the centre of Europe by the Alps and the Pyrenees, and secondly, the old and the new Member States, up to the border with Ukraine and Russia (and beyond, because one of the planned rail links goes all the way to Kiev).
In order to reach a compromise, the Council refused to reserve all of the revenue from the Eurovignettes for the transport sector, invoking the principle of subsidiarity; but it did agree to a commitment in principle to use the revenue in such a way as to guarantee the development of the network as a whole. We must hope that the last stage on the road towards the final decision (second reading of the Parliament) will be completed as quickly as possible, even though it won't be easy.
(F.R.)