Former Prime Minister and Maltese MEP Alfred Sant expressed his concerns about the growing space the EU is taking in controlling and operating national tax systems across the EU, which he insisted must remain the responsibility of the individual Member States. The Maltese MEP made this statement when he voted in favour of a resolution on the Prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing at the European Parliament.
Sant welcomed deeper transparency standards and said ensuring the safe management of EU funds by making them resilient to money laundering and terrorism financing is a prerequisite to any EU action.
“I especially welcome the inclusion of greater information on beneficial ownership and the concentration of information in a public central register of beneficial ownership. Cooperation between the Member States’ authorities is key in this revision, regardless of their status or nature. Proper enforcement of this greater cooperation and exchange of information mechanism will then need to be ensured at the national level. There has been a tendency over the past year to legislate on the protection of the Union’s financial interests and to extend the scope of application, which was necessary.”
Sant said he is nevertheless concerned that this revision would disproportionally impact the Member States’ tax flexibility as it would notably apply to tax advisors and electronic money distributors.
The Resolution addresses five tasks: (i) ensuring a high level of safeguards for financial flows from high-risk third countries; (ii) enhancing the powers of EU Financial Intelligence Units and facilitating their cooperation; (iii) ensuring centralised national bank and payment account registers or central data retrieval systems in all Member States; (iv) tackling terrorist financing risks linked to virtual currencies; and (v) tackling risks linked to anonymous pre-paid instruments (pre-paid cards).
The Resolution was approved with 574 in favour, 13 against and 60 abstentions.