Faithful to its commitment to protect the citizens of the area and the financial system from money laundering and terrorist financing, the EU Commission promises a legislative package of new reforms.

As recalled in the EU Strategy for the Security Union 2020-2025, strengthening the EU framework on combating money laundering and terrorist financing will also help protect Europeans against terrorism and terrorism organised crime. The measures proposed today significantly strengthen the existing EU framework by taking into account the emergence of new challenges related to technological innovation. These challenges include virtual currencies, the greater integration of financial flows into the single market and the international character of terrorist organisations. These proposals will create a much more harmonised framework so that operators subject to AML/CFT rules can more easily comply with them, in particular when they have cross-border activities.

The package presented today consists of four legislative proposals: a regulation establishing a new EU AML/CFT authority; an AML/CFT regulation, containing directly applicable rules, in particular as regards customer and beneficial ownership vigilance; a sixth AML/CFT Directive ('AMLD6'), replacing the current Directive 2015/849/EU (the Fourth AML Directive as amended by the Fifth AML Directive), and containing provisions that will be transposed into national law, such as rules on national supervisory authorities and financial intelligence units in the Member States; a revision of the 2015 Money Transfer Regulation to ensure the traceability of crypto-asset transfers (Regulation 2015/847/EU). The legislative package will now be examined by the European Parliament and the Council.