EU Global Facility on Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (AML/CFT)

The Facility is demand-driven and delivers tailored support based on specific country requests, detailed needs assessments, and in coordination with other technical assistance providers. It can offer: 

• Support to national legislative and regulatory drafting, institutional capacity-building and mentorship, covering the entire financial intelligence and penal chain (detection, assessment, investigation, decision and recovery stages).
• Support to sectoral risk assessments on numerous topics such as virtual assets, the non-profit sector, the notary sector or beneficial ownership.
• Regional and global events organised, in partnership with FATF-Style Regional Bodies (FSRBs), other EU projects or other relevant stakeholders, providing valuable platforms for the exchange of good practices and regional/global cooperation. 

Publications on cutting-edge topics such as beneficial ownership, reversed burden of proof, custodial financial investigations, cryptocurrencies and FATF recommendation 8 on terrorist financing in the non-profit sector, among others.

Concrete examples:

• A country is already listed or is about to be listed by FATF and/or the EU, and requests support from the EU to address the deficiencies identified in the FATF action plan.
• During a formal bilateral dialogue or as part of informal meetings between the EUD and authorities, a specific need is identified in relation to AML/CFT.

• Global coverage
• Priority countries: Country listed or near-listing as high-risk by FATF and/or the EU; as well as country which will not/never be listed by FATF (due to FATF evolving criteria) but where needs have been expressed during EU bilateral dialogues and where no other EU project provides assistance on AML/CFT.
• The request must come from the country (i.e. an EUD cannot request activation without the country confirming its interest and readiness in writing).
• Note that for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Facility comes as a complement to INTPA financed SecFin project (based on a specific coordination/deconfliction mechanism in place).

Two main possibilities:

• Request from a partner country (state and non-state stakeholders):
  1. a formal letter of request should be addressed to the relevant European Union Delegation (EUD).
  2. The EUD passes the letter on to the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) of the European Commission.
  3. Based on an internal approval process (involving a review by the EUD and a consultation with EEAS and FISMA at minima), FPI will consider whether the request merits further attention, including whether it is not already covered by an existing instrument.
  4. If the answer is positive, FPI will formally transfer the request to the project team.
  5. A confirmation will be sent to the partner country through the EUD or the EU Global Facility, depending on what the EUD considers as the most appropriate channel.
  6. If the project team requires further information on the request, it may then engage directly with the partner country.
• A request from a partner country submitted directly to the project:
  1. A partner country could address a request for support directly to the project team (for instance as a result of meeting a member of the team at an international meeting, during a scoping assignment, finding out about the project on-line….).
  2. The project team can reply to the partner country, informing that the request should be submitted to the EUD.
  3. Next steps in the process will then follow the situation described above.

While the time between the initial request and the first delivery of an online activity is usually less than 2 months, the exact timeline is determined by the speed at which the request is transmitted through the different channels, the time needed for the approval of the request by FPI/EEAS/FISMA/other DGs as relevant, the responsiveness of the recipient country, the need for additional discussions to determine the exact scope of the initial request (in particular if the initial request is generic) as well the workload of the Facility at any given time.