The European Commission is today presenting an Action Plan to strengthen
the fight against the financing of terrorism.
The recent terrorist attacks in the European Union and
beyond demonstrate the need for a strong coordinated European response to
combatting terrorism.
The European Agenda for Security had identified a number
of areas to improve the fight against terrorist financing. Today's
comprehensive Action Plan will deliver a strong and swift response to the
current challenges, building on existing EU rules and complementing them where
necessary. Through concrete measures, it will adapt or propose additional rules
to deal with new threats.
First Vice-President Frans Timmermans, said: “We have to cut off the resources
that terrorists use to carry out their heinous crimes. By detecting and
disrupting the financing of terrorist networks, we can reduce their ability to
travel, to buy weapons and explosives, to plot attacks and to spread hate and
fear online.
In the coming months the Commission will update and develop EU
rules and tools through well-designed measures to tackle emerging threats and
help national authorities to step up the fight against terrorist financing and
cooperate better, in full respect of fundamental rights. It's crucial that we
work together on terrorist financing to deliver results and protect European
citizens' security”
Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, in charge of the Euro and Social Dialogue,
said: "With today's Action Plan we are moving swiftly to clamp down on
terrorist financing, starting with legislative proposals in the coming months.
We must cut offterrorists' access to funds, enable authorities to better
track financial flows to prevent devastating attacks such as those in Paris
last year, and ensure that money laundering and terrorist financing is
sanctioned in all Member States.
We want to improve the oversight of the many
financial means used by terrorists, from cash and cultural artefacts to virtual
currencies and anonymous pre-paid cards, while avoiding unnecessary obstacles
to the functioning of payments and financial markets for ordinary, law-abiding
citizens."
The Action Plan will focus on two main strands of action:
·
Tracing terrorists through financial movements and
preventing them from moving funds or other assets;
·
Disrupting the sources of revenue used by terrorist
organisations, by targeting their capacity to raise funds.
Preventing the
movement of funds and identifying terrorist funding
Terrorists are involved in a variety of both licit and illicit activities
to finance terrorist acts. Tracking financial flows can help to identify and
pursue terrorist networks. New financial tools and payment modes create new
vulnerabilities that need to be addressed.
Closing off options for terrorism
funding is crucial for security, but measures in this field may also touch on
the lives and the economic activity of citizens and companies throughout the
EU. This is why the Commission's proposals will balance the need to increase
security with the need to protect fundamental rights, including data
protection, and economic
freedoms.
The adoption of the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Package in May 2015 represented a significant step in improving the
effectiveness of the EU's efforts to combat the laundering of money from
criminal activities and to counter the financing of terrorist activities. It
must now be implemented swiftly by Member States.
The Commission is calling on
Member States to commit to do this by the end of 2016. In December 2015, the
Commission proposed a Directive on combatting terrorism which criminalises terrorist financing and the funding of
recruitment, training and travel for terrorism purposes. The Commission is now
proposing further ways to tackle the abuse of the financial system for
terrorist financing purposes.
We will propose a number of targeted amendments to the Fourth Anti-Money
Laundering Directive at the latest by the end of the second quarter of 2016, in
the following areas:
·
Ensuring a high level of safeguards for financial
flows from high risk third countries: The
Commission will amend the Directive to include a list of all compulsory checks
(due diligence measures) that financial institutions should carry out on
financial flows from countries having strategic deficiencies in their national
anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regimes. Applying the same
measures in all Member States will avoid having loopholes in Europe, where
terrorists could run operations through countries with lower levels of
protection;
·
Enhancing the powers of EU Financial Intelligence
Units and facilitating their cooperation: the scope of
information accessible by the Financial Intelligence Units will be widened, in
line with the latest international standards;
·
Centralised national bank and payment account
registers or central data retrieval systems in all Member States: the Directive will be amended to give Financial Intelligence Units easier
and faster access to information on the holders of bank and payment accounts;
·
Tackling terrorist financing risks linked to virtual
currencies: to prevent their abuse for money laundering and
terrorist financing purposes, the Commission proposes to bring virtual currency
exchange platforms under the scope of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive, so
that these platforms have to apply customer due diligence controls when
exchanging virtual for real currencies, ending the anonymity associated with
such exchanges;
·
Tackling risks linked to anonymous pre-paid
instruments (e.g. pre-paid cards): the Commission
proposes to lower thresholds for identification and widening customer
verification requirements. Due account will be taken of proportionality, in
particular with regard to the use of these cards by financially vulnerable
citizens.
Other measures will include:
·
Improving the efficiency of the EU's transposition of
UN asset freezing measures and improve the accessibility of UN listings to
EU financial institutions and economic operators by the end of 2016. The
Commission will also assess the need for a specific EU regime for the freezing
of terrorist assets;
·
Criminalising money laundering: a comprehensive common definition of money laundering offences and
sanctions across the EU will avoid obstacles to cross-border judicial and
police cooperation to tackle money laundering;
·
Limiting risks linked to cash payments: through a legislative proposal on illicit cash movements, the Commission
will extend the scope of the existing regulation to include cash shipped by
freight or post and to allow authorities to act upon lower amounts of cash
where there are suspicions of illicit activity;
·
Assessing additional measures to track terrorism
financing: the Commission will explore the need for a
complementary EU system for tracking terrorist financing, for example to cover
intra-EU payments which are not captured by the EU-US Terrorism Financing
Tracking Programme (TFTP).
Disrupting the
sources of revenue of terrorist organisations
Illicit trade from occupied
areas is currently a primary source of revenue for terrorist organisations,
including trade in cultural goods and the illicit wildlife trade. They can also
gain from trade in legal goods.
The Commission and the European External Action
Service will providetechnical assistance to Middle East and North
African countries to fight against the trafficking of cultural
goods and provide support to third countries to comply
with United Nations Security Council Resolutions in this field.
Countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia will also
receive support to improve the fight against terrorism financing.
In 2017 the Commission will
table a legislative proposal to reinforce the powers of customs
authorities to address terrorism financing through trade in goods, for example by tackling illegal
gains through dissimulation of trade transactions, misrepresentation of the
value of goods and fictitious invoicing.
Another proposal will address
the illicit trade in cultural goods to extend the
scope of the current legislation to a wider number of countries.
Next steps
The Action Plan lists a number
of concrete measures that will be put into practice by the Commission
immediately. Others will follow in the months to come. All the actions
presented today should be carried out by the end of 2017 (see detailed timeline
in factsheet).
Background
The European Agenda on Security underlined the need for measures to address terrorist financing in a
more effective and comprehensive manner. Steps taken over the past year include
the introduction of criminal sanctions for the financing of terrorism through a
proposal for a Directive on combating terrorism, and the European Union's
signature of the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism.
The conclusions of the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 20 November, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council of 8 December as well as of the European Council of 18
December 2015 stressed the need to further intensify the work in this field. At
the same time, the resolution passed by the United Nations Security Council on
17 December 2015, more specifically targeting funding to Da'esh and extending
the former "Al Qaeda" sanction regime, showed a deep global consensus
to act against terrorist financing.
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