EU efforts to fight money laundering in the banking sector are fragmented and implementation is insufficient

Summary:

Money laundering is the practice of “legitimising” the proceeds of crime by filtering them into the regular economy to disguise their illegal origin. Given the importance of EU anti-money laundering policy and the role of the banking sector, we assessed whether the EU’s actions in this area are well implemented.

We found institutional fragmentation and poor co-ordination at EU level when it came to actions to prevent money laundering and take action where risk was identified. EU bodies have limited tools to ensure sufficient application of AML/CFT frameworks at national level. There is no single EU supervisor, the EU’s powers are split between several bodies and co-ordination with Member States is carried out separately.

We make recommendations to remedy these issues.

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