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August 9, 2026

Newsletter

The European Post

Policy • Diplomacy • Strategic Insight

LATEST
New EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before AntalyaNew EU Gas Market Rules Take Effect With Consumer SafeguardsDeforestation Regulation Holds Its December Deadline Despite CutsDigital Omnibus Delays Europe’s High-Risk AI Deadline to 2027Europe’s Schools Confront a Widening Basic Skills GapRule of Law Report Finds Progress but Trust Still LagsIRIS2 Gains 66 Satellites as Brussels Signs the Rollout DealNature Restoration Plans Come Due as Member States Race a DeadlineECB Rates Hold at 2.25 Percent as Frankfurt Waits on the DataEU Budget Talks Turn to Cohesion as Ireland Takes OverWildfire Response Stretches Europe’s Emergency Fleet ThinCan Europe’s Quantum Plan Match Its Big Ambitions?Armenia Edges West as Moscow’s Grip Slips AwayEurope Inherits the World’s Aid Bill It Cannot Fully PayAir Passenger Rights Get Their First Overhaul in Two DecadesErasmus Opens a 5 Billion Euro Round for Skills and MobilityCeuta Crisis Pushes the EU Toward Faster Migrant ReturnsBulky Parcels Face a Packaging Crackdown From August 12Can Europe Build Its Drone Wall Before 2030 Arrives?Indonesia’s Trade Deal With Europe Nears Its Final SignatureEurope Leans on Beijing to Keep Climate Talks Alive Before Antalya

Money Laundering Watchdog Drafts Its First Supervisory Rulebook

Marian Lund
Legislative Tracker, Taxation

Frankfurt: Europe’s newest financial regulator has begun turning ambition into paperwork. The Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism, known as AMLA, held a public hearing on 2 July on its draft guidelines for how banks and other obliged entities should monitor customer relationships over time. The session marked one of the first concrete steps toward a single supervisory approach to dirty money across the bloc.

AMLA took up operations only a year ago, in July 2025, and it still lacks the direct powers it will eventually wield over the riskiest cross-border banks. For now it writes the rulebook that national supervisors and firms will follow. The guidelines under discussion set out what continuous, risk-based monitoring of a business relationship should look like in practice, from spotting unusual transactions to refreshing customer due diligence when circumstances change.

The stakes are considerable. National regulators have long applied the same directives in strikingly different ways, and criminals have exploited the gaps between them. By fixing a common baseline, AMLA hopes to end the patchwork that allowed scandals to move quietly from one jurisdiction to another. Supervisors in weaker member states will face clearer expectations, and firms operating across borders will no longer be able to plead conflicting national rules.

Industry groups have welcomed the clarity while warning about cost. Smaller institutions argue that constant monitoring demands technology and staff they can barely afford, and they want the guidelines to scale obligations to genuine risk rather than impose a uniform burden. Compliance officers at larger banks, by contrast, mostly want predictability, so they can build systems once rather than rebuild them each time a national regulator reinterprets the law.

AMLA plans to open direct supervision of selected high-risk entities in 2028, after the wider anti-money-laundering package phases in. The authority is recruiting rapidly in Frankfurt and building the data infrastructure it will need to compare suspicious-activity patterns across the whole union. Its first conference, held at the Alte Oper in June, signalled how quickly it intends to establish itself as the centre of gravity for financial-crime supervision.

The public hearing feeds into a consultation that will shape the final text. Financial intelligence units, banks, and civil-society observers can still submit views before the guidelines are locked. The European Commission has framed the reform as essential to protecting the single market’s integrity, and further detail sits with the new authority and the Commission’s financial-crime team.

What emerges will not stop money laundering on its own. But a shared definition of good supervision removes a favourite excuse and gives honest firms a fixed target to aim at. After years of promises, the union is finally writing down what vigilance means.

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