EU-lidstaten opgeroepen om witwassen van geld aan te pakken (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Tuesday (6 April) urged Member States to implement fully EU rules on combating money laundering - one of the measures identified last month as necessary in the EU's fight against terrorism.

This Framework Decision sets out minimum harmonisation of penalties for some money laundering offences and provides for faster processing of cross-border requests related to the identification and freezing of assets.

Although member states were supposed to put the necessary measures in place by end of December 2002, a number of them still have not fully implemented them.

The declaration on combating terrorism, which was adopted shortly after the 11 March attacks in Madrid, called on EU states to put in place the money laundering measures by "no later than June 2004".

The Commission said today that "a number of member states still have a long way to go to ensure the rapid and complete transposition of the Framework Decision".

However, the Brussels executive is in a weak position on this as it cannot force EU governments to put the measures in place.

"It will be up to the Council to decide what kind of pressure should be exerted", the Commission spokesperson for Justice and Home affairs said.

Member States are being urged to take the remaining measures to implement these rules as quickly as possible and inform the Commission of steps taken by 1 September 2004.

EU government are extremely slow to tell the Commission anything in this area. At the time of a similar deadline this time last year, only six Member States (France, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK) had taken the trouble to inform Brussels.