On 12 January 2023, the European Parliament announced that MEPs have adopted rules to smoothen investigations into financial crime. The new rules will facilitate access to centralised bank registries.

The new rules mandate EU Member States to ensure that the information from centralised registries is available through a single access point to be developed and operated by the European Commission. Henceforth, competent authorities can quickly establish if an individual holds accounts in several EU countries without multiple time-consuming queries.

Going forward, the full house of the European Parliament will be asked to endorse the mandate for negotiations.