https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/12/18/anti-money-laundering-council-and-parliament-agree-on-procedure-to-select-seat-for-new-authority/

Today, the Council and the European Parliament representatives reached a common understanding on the process for selecting the seat of the future European authority for countering money laundering and terrorist financing (AMLA).

The new authority is the centrepiece of the reform of the EU’s anti-money laundering framework. The authority will have direct and indirect supervisory powers over obliged entities and the power to impose sanctions and measures. Last week, the co-legislators reached a provisional agreement on the design of AMLA.

Regarding the location of the authority, the Council and the Parliament have worked together to ensure a selection process that is transparent, fair and equitable to all candidates.

The co-legislators agreed on the principle of organising joint public hearings to allow representatives of member states’ candidacies to present their applications. The co-legislators will assess each application according to the selection criteria included in the call for applications, the information provided by candidates in their application forms, the Commission’s assessment of those forms as well as the outcome of the joint public hearings.

The final decision on the location of AMLA’s seat should be made by the co-legislators in an informal inter-institutional meeting at political level, where the Parliament’s and the Council’s representatives will vote together at the same time with the same number of votes attributed to each co-legislator.

The location of the seat resulting from the process will be included in the AMLA regulation and formally adopted as part of the text.

Background and next steps

On 20 July 2021, the Commission presented a package of legislative proposals to strengthen the EU’s rules on anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing (AML/CFT). This package includes a regulation establishing a new EU anti-money laundering authority.

In its judgments of 14 July 2022 concerning the seat of the European Medicines Agency and the European Labour Authority, the EU Court of Justice held that the competence to determine the location of the seat of those agencies lies with the EU legislature, which must act to that end in accordance with the procedures laid down by the substantively relevant provisions of the Treaties, in this case the ordinary legislative procedure.

The process agreed by the co-legislators will be now applicable for selecting the seat of AMLA, the first agency to be set up after the judgments of 14 July 2022.

The discussions to agree on a selection procedure for the location of the seat took place between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission. In June 2023, the co-legislators agreed on joint criteria for the selection of the seat of AMLA. On 28 September, the Commission launched the call for applications, with the deadline of 10 November for member states to send applications.

Nine member states submitted applications to host AMLA: Belgium (Brussels), Germany (Frankfurt), Ireland (Dublin), Spain (Madrid), France (Paris), Italy (Rome), Latvia (Riga), Lithuania (Vilnius) and Austria (Vienna).

The Commission was tasked to assess the eligibility of the candidacies. The release of the assessment is expected for January 2024. The next step is to proceed with the selection. Once the location of the seat has been selected, it will be included in the regulation.