On 5 July 2016, the European Commission presented a proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directive (EU) 2015/849, which is intended to prevent the financial system from being used for money laundering or terrorist financing. Following negotiations between the Council and the European Parliament, a provisional agreement was reached on 13 December 2017. The agreed upon text still has to go through a formal vote in both the Council and Parliament. One of the contributions of the text would be imposing improved checks and due diligence on financial transactions to and from third countries showing anti-money laundering prevention deficiencies. For this purpose, the Commission will consolidate a harmonised list of “high-risk third countries”.
