Minister McGrath and Minister of State Carroll MacNeill welcome the selection of Frankfurt as the seat of AMLA

Following a joint meeting of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament in Brussels today (Thursday), Frankfurt has been selected as the city that will host the headquarters of AMLA, the EU’s new Anti-Money Laundering Authority. The new authority is the centrepiece of an AML(anti-money laundering) package from the European Commission that aims to protect communities across Europe from criminal and terrorist activities by denying them access to the financial system.

Ireland, along with eight other Member States, had applied to host the headquarters of AMLA. The new authority is expected to grow to a 400-person operation within 4 years and will be an important new EU authority for the financial services sector and the wider European economy.

Following the vote, Minister Michael McGrath TD said:

“I want to congratulate Frankfurt and the German Government on their success in winning this incredibly competitive race to host AMLA. From the outset, we were clear that our priority is to deliver on the AML package and we will work now with Germany, and all Member States to make AMLA a success. Ireland made a serious and very credible bid to bring the new authority to our capital city and I want to sincerely thank all of the support we received from fellow Member States and MEPs from the Parliament. It was clear to me from my discussions in recent days with Finance Minister colleagues from right across the EU that Ireland’s bid was well regarded and deemed to be of high quality.”

AMLA is the first EU authority to be selected in a joint process with both the representatives of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament through applications to the European Commission. Ireland applied for Dublin to host the authority in November and followed up with an extensive engagement process with the relevant decision makers in Parliament and the Member States.

Commenting on the result, Minister Carroll MacNeill said:

“AMLA is an important step in the delivery of safer streets and stopping criminals profiting from the proceeds of their crime.

I’m proud of the work the Irish State put into our campaign. I sincerely thank everyone in the Irish financial services industry, colleagues in all political parties, our MEPs and government departments for campaigning on our AMLA bid. We made a really strong case for Ireland and put a lot of work into telling the story of Ireland, the capacity that we have to do something of this scale, how strong our financial services sector is and how committed Europeans we are.

The most important thing of all now is that AMLA works really well to disrupt the proceeds of crime across Europe.”

With the seat of AMLA confirmed the AML package can be finalised and the new authority could be in existence by the second half of this year.

ENDS