Anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism.

Money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) harm society in a number of ways. Money laundering facilitates and perpetuates crime and supports criminals. Terrorist financing facilitates the commitment of atrocities at home and abroad. Together, they undermine the trust of citizens in financial institutions, negatively affect market integrity and threaten the stability of the financial system. ML/TF cannot be fought in isolation. Governments, public authorities and the private sector all have a role to play. Since its inception, the EBA has been working to foster a common approach by national competent authorities and financial institutions across the single market to anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/ CFT), and to equip them to apply this approach effectively. A common approach is important, because financial crime respects no borders and a weakness in one area of the single market opens up the entire single market to abuse. The high-profile scandals of the last few years have shown that, collectively, we must strengthen Europe’s AML/CFT defences. This is why the European legislature gave the EBA new powers to lead, coordinate and monitor EU supervisors’ fight against ML/TF. It also gave us a new objective, to prevent the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing. We will use all of our powers and functions to fulfil our AML/CFT objective. We will lead the development of EU-wide AML/CFT policies and standards within our mandate, monitor risks to the integrity of the single market and coordinate supervisory actions at Union level to ensure that financial institutions apply effective and robust AML/CFT controls wherever they operate in the single market. We aim to make a real difference in the fight against financial crime.