The European Commission (EC) believes that the EU’s 5th Anti-Money-Laundering Directive must be supplemented with an innovative and effective AML/CFT framework to fight the risks that EU is facing currently. In this regard, the EC has proposed an elaborate plan.
The EC proposes that an integrated EU-wide AML/CFT system be implemented. An EU-level supervisor must be appointed to work cooperatively with national-level authorities. Additionally, a coordination mechanism is important to allow all Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) to work together. Moreover, to check cross-border money-laundering, the national centralised bank account registries must be linked.
The EC is also pushing for a better information exchange and cross-border cooperation to expedite criminal case investigations and persecutions. It also encourages more public-private partnerships to use financial intelligence in the best way possible. Since money-laundering and terrorism-financing are global problems, the EU must set admirable international standards for AML/CFT operations. The EC has set early 2021 as its target to implement this Action Plan.
