The EPP Group in the European Parliament wants the new European Anti-Money Laundering Authority to have more power over its national counterparts.

"It will be key that the new Anti-Money Laundering Authority will actually be in charge of all relevant institutions and will be truly independent from its national counterparts. The biggest risk is that we are adding just one additional layer of complexity and creating a new conflict of competences. To avoid that, it must be crystal clear that the new Authority firmly calls the shots for high-risk entities", said Markus Ferber MEP, EPP Group Spokesman in Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

"Even though the current EU anti-money laundering legislation focuses on the prevention, investigation and prosecution of money laundering, we still have some deficiencies to overcome. The uneven transposition of the current Anti-Money Laundering Directive on a national level is a case in point. We need better coordination between national Financial Intelligence Units. It is also time to enhance EU-level supervision", said Emil Radev MEP, who is responsible for the topic in Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

Both MEPs spoke ahead of the European Commission’s unveiling of a legislative package of anti-money laundering initiatives today.

Ferber heavily criticised the loopholes in the current system. "So far, coordination is poor and the implementation varies a great degree between Member States. The plethora of loopholes and the poor enforcement make life far too easy for money launderers. The Commission is right to address this problem with an own dedicated EU agency, but the proposal is long overdue. We have seen that the European Banking Authority is simply not up to the task of fighting money laundering effectively", Ferber stressed. Photo by Ash Crow, Wikimedia commons.