The European Banking Authority (EBA) is an independent EU regulatory agency established in 2011, headquartered in Paris, with a mandate to ensure effective and consistent prudential regulation and supervision across the European banking sector. In the AML context, the EBA holds a particularly important role as the EU’s primary standard-setter and coordinator for AML and CTF supervision of the financial sector — a role that was significantly expanded by the 5th AMLD, which gave the EBA a specific mandate to lead, coordinate and monitor the AML/CFT efforts of all EU financial sector supervisors, not merely those of banking regulators. The EBA issues binding technical standards, guidelines, opinions, and peer review reports on AML matters that are directly applicable to competent authorities and, through those authorities, to obliged entities across all EU Member States.
Among the EBA’s most practically significant AML outputs are its Guidelines on Risk Factors and Simplified and Enhanced Customer Due Diligence — which provide detailed, sector-by-sector guidance on how to calibrate CDD measures proportionately to risk — and its Guidelines on Internal Governance, which set out expectations for how financial institutions should organise and resource their compliance functions. The EBA also monitors the quality of AML supervision across EU Member States, conducting peer reviews of national competent authorities and — where it identifies serious deficiencies — issuing formal opinions and breach of Union law investigations against supervisors that are failing to meet their obligations. With the establishment of AMLA, the EBA’s AML coordination functions are expected to transfer progressively to the new authority from 2025–2026, though the EBA will retain its broader prudential and conduct standard-setting role across the EU banking sector.
Links: https://www.eba.europa.eu/legacy/regulation-and-policy/regulatory-activities/anti-money-laundering-and-countering-financing-1
https://www.eba.europa.eu/activities/single-rulebook/regulatory-activities/internal-governance/guidelines-internal-governance-under-crd
