G. Skaistė in a Meeting with European Commissioner M. McGuinness: "It Is Important to Agree on the Establishment of the AMLA at the EU Level As Soon As Possible"

Minister of Finance Gintarė Skaistė, who met in Brussels with the member of the European Commission responsible for financial services, financial stability and the capital markets union, Mairead McGuinness, drew attention to the need to reach a consensus at the EU level as soon as possible on the newly created Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) selection process and criteria, emphasizing the extremely important mandate of this institution.

"Given the important mandate of the newly created EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority, or AMLA, it is important to reach a consensus at the EU level in the near future on the establishment of this institution," noted Minister of Finance Gintarė Skaistė. “Having set the ambition to attract the AMLA to Lithuania, we emphasize not only our competences in the financial technology and money laundering prevention sectors, a large circle of talents and a high quality of life in Vilnius. We are convinced that one of the essential selection criteria must be the geographical balance within the EU – the newly established institutions should be more evenly distributed among the Member Countries, and not concentrated in only a few large countries".

The initiative to create a European-wide agency was shown in 2021. It is expected that an agreement on where the AMLA will be located and what specific mandate it will have at the EU level will be reached by the end of this year, and the new institution will start its work already in the first half of next year.

The AMLA will be the main institution ensuring a coherent and unified system for the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing in the EU financial sector and coordinating actions with the national supervisory authorities of the Member States.

In the meeting of the Minister of Finance with European Commissioner M. McGuinness, the issues of the implementation of sanctions against Russia and Belarus were also discussed.

Last updated: 22-06-2023

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