Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on information accompanying transfers of funds and certaincrypto-assets (recast)

On 20 July the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation to update existing rules on information accompanying transfers of funds. This proposal constitutes the fourth initiative of the AML/CFT legislative package put forward by the European Commission.

The proposed regulation – together with the 6^th Anti Money Laundering Directive and the Regulation on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing, as presented above – establish the so-called ‘single EU rulebook’ on AML/CFT that will harmonise the AML/CFT framework across the EU.

Essentially, this Regulation will revise the Regulation (EU) 2015/847 – which currently covers only certain categories of crypto-asset service providers – in order to extend its scope to virtual assets transfers. The aim of this proposal is to ensure full traceability of the entire crypto-asset transfers by extending the obligation of payment service providres to collect and make accessible full information about the sender and beneficiary of the transfers of virtual assets they operate, in order to facilitate the prevention, detection and investigation of their possible use for money laundering and terrorist financing.

The file was assigned jointly to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committe. On 25 November 2021 URTASUN Ernest and KANKO Assita were appointed as rapporteurs for the file.

On 1 December 2021 the Council agreed on a mandate to negotiate on the draft regulation with the European Parliament.

The file awaits Committee decision.