The European Commission has made commitments offered by Apple legally binding under EU antitrust rules. The commitments address the Commission’s competition concerns relating to Apple’s refusal to grant rivals access to a standard technology used for contactless payments with iPhones in stores (‘Near-Field-Communication (NFC)’ or ‘tap and go’). Continue reading…

The FCA has told financial firms – including banks, payment firms and lenders – to do more to ensure parliamentarians, senior public servants and their families are not treated unfairly. Under legislation adopted by Parliament, financial firms are required to do extra checks on so-called politically exposed persons (PEPs). This follows global standards set by the international Financial Action Task Force and implemented by more than 200 jurisdictions. There have been concerns about how firms in the UK are meeting these requirements and so the FCA has reviewed how firms are treating PEPs.

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Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atoms quantum computers, has on 29 May announced a strategic collaboration with Tech Mahindra, (NSE: TECHM), a leading global provider of technology consulting and digital solutions to enterprises across industries.  This collaboration aims to accelerate the development and adoption of quantum solutions across diverse industries globally. Continue reading…

The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has recently published the 2024 ICS data collection package for the final year of the monitoring period and announced its high-level plans for ICS implementation. “Ahead of the ICS’s planned adoption at the end of the year, we are pleased to publish the 2024 ICS technical specifications,” remarked Shigeru Ariizumi, IAIS Executive Committee Chair. “Comments received in response to the 2023 public consultation helped enhance the ICS design, which is now almost ready for adoption. This has enabled us to increase our focus on supporting the comprehensive and consistent implementation of the ICS by jurisdictions.”  Continue reading…

Eurojust and the United States Department of Justice brought together senior European and US officials, prosecutors and law enforcement members for the purpose of stepping up efforts to combat the unlawful transfer of sensitive technology to foreign adversaries. The meeting on 12 July emphasised the urgent need to stop the illicit export of goods to Russia in light of its ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. Continue reading…

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has recently issued new Guidelines on the so-called ‘travel rule’, i.e. the information that should accompany transfers of funds and certain crypto assets. This rule will help tackle the abuse of  such transfers for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes. The Guidelines specify which information should accompany a transfer of funds or crypto assets and also list the steps that payment service providers (PSPs), intermediary PSPs (IPSPs), crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) and intermediary CASPs (ICASPs) should take to detect missing or incomplete information, and what they should do if a transfer of funds or a transfer of crypto-assets lacks the required information. Continue reading…

Marking a historic moment, one year ago today, Eurojust launched the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression (ICPA) – a unique judicial coordination platform dedicated to supporting national investigations into the crime of aggression related to the war in Ukraine. Since its launch in July 2023, the ICPA has made significant progress in building a common investigative and prosecutorial strategy for cases on the crime of aggression. ICPA participants have selected relevant evidence to focus on, and have coordinated and strengthened ongoing investigative efforts at national level.

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by Olaf Sleijpen

Our world is currently threatened by increasing fragmentation, both political and economic. This makes it increasingly difficult to foresee all shocks, and so, it has brought new challenges to the community of macroprudential experts,’ concluded Olaf Sleijpen in his opening speech at the 8th Annual Macroprudential Conference, organised by the Bundesbank, the Sveriges Riksbank and De Nederlandsche Bank. I would like to share latest on a number of macroprudential topics, but also to talk about that one thing that’s on every central banker’s mind… money. Now, I don’t want to talk about some abstract notion of money today. No, I’d like to talk about a very particular coin. And that’s the Reichsthaler in German, the riksdaler in Swedish, and the rijksdaalder in Dutch. Continue reading…

The European Central Bank (ECB) has on 24 June published its first progress report on the digital euro preparation phase, which was launched on 1 November 2023 with the aim of laying the foundations for the potential issuance of a digital euro. The report outlines the progress made on key digital euro design aspects and the envisaged next steps for the project. Continue reading…

by Hans Timmerman

The information balance between governments/organizations and their citizens/customers has become increasingly skewed over the past decades. Political motives and resulting legislation compel executing organizations to collect excessive amounts of data about their citizens or customers. Meanwhile, privacy laws simultaneously restrict how they can use this collected data. Without explicit consent from the citizen or customer, the use of this data is minimal. This leads to significant excesses and/or inefficiencies, as seen in the benefits scandal and now with the implementation of the Wwft (the law to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism). In both cases, the political efforts to prevent fraud and terrorism have gone so far that executing organizations are effectively forced to trample basic human rights. That this leads to mishaps and excesses is understandable. How can we restore this balance? Continue reading…