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#AML - Dombrovskis calls for EU-level supervision following EBA's refusal to act over Danske scandal

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Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis

Today (7 May) the European Commission launched a new action plan, which sets out measures that the Commission will take over the next twelve months to better enforce, supervise and coordinate the EU's rules on combating money laundering and terrorist financing. 

Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said that it was even more important during the pandemic, as Europol and national authorities informed the Commission that Coronavirus related crime is on the rise. 

Last year, the European Banking Authority (EBA) failed to take action on one of the most egregious money laundering scandals, the estimated €200 billion of suspicious transactions ‘cleaned’ through Danske Bank. The EU is calling for more effective over-arching EU supervision.

The plan is built on six pillars, each of which is aimed at improving the EU's overall fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as strengthening the EU's global role in this area. 

The six pillars are as follows:

1) Effective application of EU rules by EU states and also ‘encourages’ the European Banking Authority (EBA) to make full use of its new powers to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing.  

2) A single EU rulebook: EU states tend to have diverging interpretations of the rules that lead to loopholes, which can be exploited by criminals. To combat this, the Commission will propose a more harmonised set of rules in the first quarter of 2021.

3) The Commission will propose to set up an EU-level supervisor, to compensate for gaps that arise as the European Banking Authority (EBA) has proved unable or unfit to take on this role (Danske Bank scandal).

4) In the first quarter of 2021, the Commission will propose an EU mechanism to help further coordinate and support national financial intelligence units (FIU). 

5) Enforcing EU-level criminal law provisions and information exchange: The Commission will issue guidance on the role of public-private partnerships to clarify and enhance data sharing.

6) The EU will step-up its efforts to provide a single global actor in this area. To this end the Commission has published a new methodology to identify high-risk third countries that have strategic deficiencies in their national anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing regimes, it will align more closely with FATF, the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog.

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