AMLR: A New EU-Wide Level Playing Field Through Increased Harmonisation

After years of negotiations, the EU Parliament has finally adopted the long-awaited EU regulation on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing (AMLR or Regulation), which focuses mainly on customer due diligence aspects.

To give some background, its main objective is to address the issue of the currently fragmented application of AML/CFT rules across the EU by avoiding, in the future, discrepancies in how each Member State implements these into their national legislation. To date, these discrepancies have been possible as the current EU AML/CFT framework is largely based on EU directives that require implementation at Member State level. This will now be achieved through a directly applicable EU-wide regulation, which thus provides for the necessary granularity of customer due diligence rules to be applied by each Member State. This will then also pave the way for an aligned and much more harmonised