AMLA Holds First Conference as the EU Centralises Its Fight Against Financial Crime

The EU’s new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) held its first conference in Frankfurt on 9 June, as the bloc moves to harmonise and centralise its response to money laundering and terrorist financing.

Titled “Building Trust, Enhancing Integrity: A New Chapter in the EU’s Fight Against Financial Crime”, the event at the Alte Oper brought together senior figures from Europe’s supervisory, regulatory and financial intelligence communities, alongside private-sector representatives. AMLA said the agenda would focus on the issues shaping the fight against what it called “rapidly evolving financial crime”, including intelligence against organised crime, practical supervision and cooperation, and technological risks and opportunities.

The programme featured opening remarks from AMLA Chair Bruna Szego and keynotes from European Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque and members of the European Parliament, with further speakers drawn from FIU Germany, Europol, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Chainalysis and the Bank for International Settlements.

The conference marks an early milestone for an agency set to sit at the centre of the EU’s anti-financial-crime framework. Frankfurt-based AMLA began operations in July 2025 and, from 2028, will directly supervise around 40 of the largest, highest-risk cross-border financial groups, with powers to impose fines of up to 10% of annual turnover or 10 million euros.

It anchors a broader package that includes the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation, the EU’s new directly applicable “single rulebook”, and the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, all designed to replace a fragmented, country-by-country model. In recent weeks, AMLA has also opened a public consultation on how firms should carry out ongoing monitoring of their business relationships and transactions, an early sign of the detailed expectations to come.

For banks, fintechs, crypto firms and other obliged entities, the direction of travel is clear: more consistent rules, more data-driven supervision, and higher expectations around evidencing risk-based decisions. Meeting them will require AML programmes that pair accurate customer due diligence with continuous screening and monitoring capable of standing up to a single EU supervisor.

Shufti’s AML screening and ongoing monitoring tools help firms keep pace, combining sanctions, PEP and adverse-media screening with transaction monitoring and continuous risk assessment. Request a demo to see how Shufti supports AML compliance under the EU’s new regime.