The European Union's Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) has proposed a common approach for supervisors enforcing breaches of financial-crime rules, in an effort to ensure that similar breaches result in similar outcomes across member states.
Under the draft regulatory technical standards, supervisors would follow a shared, step-by-step method. They would weigh indicators such as the duration of a breach, whether it was repeated, its systemic nature and its impact, then sort it into one of four levels of gravity before applying common criteria that will ultimately decide the enforcement outcome.
The standards would cover both financial and non-financial sectors, and once adopted by the European Commission they would apply directly across all EU countries. AMLA's public consultation on the proposal closed on 27 January 2026.
AMLA will directly supervise some of the highest-risk cross-border firms in the financial sector and will coordinate national authorities to keep standards consistent. The proposal sits alongside separate AMLA work on harmonised risk-assessment standards for the non-financial sector, and on guidelines developed with the European Data Protection Board covering how regulated firms share information to combat financial crime.
