Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 12 February 2020 - Strasbourg

State of play of the EU's fight against money laundering, in light of the Luanda Leaks (debate)

  Pedro Marques (S&D). – Mr President, with this timely debate we go back to a recurrent concern of this Parliament. These practices harm the European society because relevant parts of our resources are directed to criminal activities. The scope of innovation in financial transactions is enormous. Digital transactions grow every day and become more and more sophisticated. We have to recognise that regulation in actual practices by the authorities have been insufficient. We need coherent regimes of supervision and on the actual definition of illegal practices. We need much more cooperation between the different authorities in Member States. We need to consider an additional role for the European authorities. We need compliance to step up in the institutions, even through the enforcement of public authorities. For all this to happen, we probably have to step up the legislative and regulatory process at European level, considering seriously the possibility of approving a European regulation. Finally, we need people to trust the banks, financial institutions, public authorities. Therefore, this battle is far from won. Let’s keep fighting the good fight.