New money laundering rules won’t block crypto payments, a leading European Union lawmaker said Tuesday, just hours before the European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the legislation.
The Anti-Money Laundering Regulation set to be discussed by the Economic and Civil Liberties committees would impose a limit of 1,000 euros (US$1,080) for payments made from self-hosted wallets where it isn’t possible to identify the payer.
“We are absolutely not preventing crypto transactions,” Damien Carême, a French lawmaker from the Green party, told reporters. “It’s just when identification isn’t possible.”
Carême, one of the two lawmakers jointly responsible for negotiating the law on behalf of the parliament, also referred to provisions on money laundering in the metaverse, saying he didn’t want to see dirty money inhibited by banking controls to simply flow into other sectors.
Should the vote pass, lawmakers will enter into negotiations from the EU’s Council, representing the bloc’s member states, to frame a consistent version of the law.
In a draft last year, the Council sought to prevent banks or crypto providers from handling cryptocurrencies that guarantee anonymity – but Carême said a ban on the likes of dash, monero and zcash wasn’t needed as they were already outlawed by the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA).
