Anti-money laundering, the government is nominating Rome as the seat of the European Authority

On the day of the report by the Bank of Italy’s Financial Intelligence Unit on the activity carried out in the fight against money laundering and terrorism, the decision to nominate Rome as a candidate for hosting the headquarters of the European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) filters through Palazzo Chigi .

According to what was filtered to the news agencies, the choice fell precisely on the Capital in a list of cities that also included Milan, Bari, Turin and Palermo.

The role of the Authority

The formalization of the Italian candidacy for the Amla had been advanced by the minister Giancarlo Giorgettiduring a bilateral meeting at the beginning of the year with the EU Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union, Mairead McGuinness.

The process to launch the European Authority dates back to July 2021, when the European Commission’s proposal for the new entity responsible for combating money laundering and terrorist financing arrived. All as part of a legislative package to implement the global money laundering risk prevention policy launched with the 2020 action plan.

The Authority should therefore become the center of an integrated system with the various national authorities that have the mandate of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism supervision, then supporting the local Financial Intelligence Units and establishing a cooperation mechanism between them. The activities of credit and financial institutions, including subjects operating in the cryptocurrency sector, may therefore fall under the supervision of the Authority.

On 29 June last year it was the turn of the first political agreement in the Council, then the dossier passed to the European Parliament, which dealt with it in the commission before starting the final negotiation phase last April.

On the Italian side, Roma Capitale was identified by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, in agreement with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Ministry of European Affairs. The decision was communicated in a letter to the candidate cities by the undersecretary for the presidency of the council Alfredo Mantovano.

The government’s choice was made taking into account the criteria for selecting the Amla headquarters disclosed at the time by the European Union and in the light of the technical investigation carried out on the projects sent by the candidate cities. Undersecretary Mantovano, emphasizing the high level of all the candidate cities’ projects, thanked all of them on behalf of the government for their efforts for an “authoritative and strong” Italian candidacy. “I thank the government for having believed in our project”, reacted the mayor Roberto Gualtieri: “A candidacy of fundamental importance not only for the Capital but for the entire country-system”.

The next steps

The Council and Parliament will now decide jointly – for the first time – on the seat of the European Agency. The procedure will probably provide for the presentation of candidatures by the individual States (we are talking about a third of chancelleries interested), to then collect them all and have them passed to the scrutiny of the Council and the European Parliament, which will follow the legal procedure to identify the final winner.

The goal, also to avoid ending up in the middle of the renewal of the European Parliament, is to close the game by April 2024.

The match should therefore enter the hot phase from next autumn. The expected competitors for Rome are almost certainly Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna and Madrid, but other candidates are also expected from Eastern European countries. It must be said that those mentioned already have the headquarters of an agency: Eiopa (insurance) in Frankfurt, Eba and Esma (banks and markets) in Paris, FRA (fundamental rights) in Vienna, GNSS in Madrid.