The second official meeting of the ECOFIN committee is finally happening. Firstly, all ministers set the ground for today’s meeting, expressed their expectations from this session and also their impressions from yesterday’s meeting. The first discussion that took place was the characteristics of shell coorporations. All of them agreed that the most important sector of shell companies is that they can be created too easily so it is necessary to track down the beneficial owners, fight the annonymity and also have more transparency.
Later on, the main topic was the aspects that render the SC illegal. The minister of France noted that although their existence is absolutely legal, the tactics they follow are often shady so they need to focus on facing them, which all ministers supported. In order to fight this problem they all were in favour of cooporation and unity. Fill in the gaps that exist or investigate the sections where money laundering exists. Germany strongly pointed out that the participation of national authorities (such as EBA) is necessary. Luxembourg although, made clear that they are supporters of independent actions that they will later lead into a common law.
After that, considering the solutions Sweden, Finland,France and the Czech Republic all agreed with the fact that the first stage of money laundering (which is the payment) should be dealed with in the first place. This idea found Cyprus in the opposing side and proposed focusing on the last own which is finding and tackling the beneficial owner. Along with them Italy mentioned the second stage (layering).
Once again the ideas and opinions were many and they couldn’t conclude in a common solution. So let’s see what is next.
Vasiliki Katsarou, Journalist of ECOFIN, EU Focus
