Claude Bocqueraz
Deputy Head of the Financial Crime Unit at the European Commission’s DG-FISMA
AT first sight, simplifying the rules to combat financial crime seems counterintuitive.
Financial crime is becoming increasingly complex, fast-moving, and global—consider the rapid rise of cryptocurrencies’ use, for example.
So how can simplification reinforce our fight against financial crime? In fact, simplification is essential to enhancing both the efficiency and the overall effectiveness of our regulatory framework for AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and CTF (Countering the Financing of Terrorism).
But, importantly, simplification does not mean reducing vigilance; rather, it is about improving it—streamlining processes so that regulatory efforts are sharper, more focused, and more impactful.
When we discuss simplification in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, we must be clear about what we mean.
Simplification is not about relaxing standards or reducing scrutiny — it is about making rules clearer, supervision more consistent, and compliance more efficient and more effective. In other words, simplification means building a system that is both easier to understand and stronger in practice.
Harmonization
Today, one of the main strengths of the new European AML/CFT framework is precisely this ambition: to simplify through harmonisation and integration. And I would like to highlight five points related to this.
First, the introduction of a single rulebook (with the AMLD 6 and the AML R replacing the current directive) is a historic step forward. Until now, obliged entities across the EU had to navigate 27 different transpositions of the AML directives, each with its own national specificities and interpretations. The new framework replaces this patchwork with one coherent set of directly applicable rules.
For financial institutions and professionals operating across borders, this will bring greater legal certainty, fewer inconsistencies, and a reduction in duplicative processes. Compliance teams will spend less time interpreting differences and more time managing actual risks.
Second, the establishment of an integrated supervisory system, with the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) at its centre, represents a significant simplification of how the supervisory system will function.
AMLA will connect national supervisors and EU bodies into a single coordinated structure based on mutual trust, cooperation, and information sharing. It will develop common technical standards, define supervisory methodologies, and ensure that expectations are aligned across Member States. For the private sector, this means clearer guidance and more predictability in how supervision is carried out.
Capacity
Third, simplification also requires building supervisory capacity, especially in the non-financial sectors where practices and resources still vary widely. AMLA’s future work — mapping supervisory practices and resources, conducting peer reviews, and delivering targeted training — will help ensure that all supervisors, large and small, apply the same principles to the same standard.
This investment in capacity will reduce fragmentation, close compliance gaps (non financial sector), and make it easier for both supervisors and obliged entities to understand what is expected from them.
Fourth, another key element of simplification lies in information sharing. For years, one of the biggest bottlenecks in the AML/CFT system has been the difficulty of exchanging data or information — not just between the public and private sectors, but also across borders and institutions.
With the new AML package, the European Union has taken significant steps to enhance cooperation and information sharing at all levels: among FIUs (including those outside the Union), among supervisors (also including those from outside the Union), between various authorities at national and EU levels, and between the private sector and public authorities.
The AML Regulation now introduces, for the first time, a legal basis for public private information-sharing partnerships. These partnerships will enable structured and secure exchanges between financial institutions, supervisors, FIUs and law enforcement authorities. AMLA’s coordinating role here will be critical. By setting common safeguards (ensuring data protection) and facilitating collaboration, AMLA will help foster a more intelligent use of information.
If data protection, fundamental rights and national law criminal requirements are met, then the judicial system will be able to use the information and gathered intelligence, for prosecution. This is simplification through smarter cooperation.
Trust
Fifth and finally, simplification is also about trust. The European Commission has been clear that AMLA’s mission is to harmonise supervision, ensure coordination, and build and maintain trust. Trust among authorities, trust between supervisors and the private sector, and ultimately trust from citizens that the system works.
A system that is consistent, transparent, and predictable is one that institutions, public and private, can follow with confidence — and one that criminals will find much harder to exploit.
So, when we talk about simplification of AML requirements, we are really talking about creating clarity, coherence, and consistency across Europe. We are moving from a fragmented landscape of national rules to a unified European framework that is easier to apply, easier to supervise, and ultimately more effective in protecting the integrity of our financial system.
And in that journey, AMLA will be the key actor — hopefully turning complexity into clarity, fragmentation into unity, and compliance into a shared European effort through smarter cooperation.
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